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'm. 







Melor of the Silver Hand 

and Other Stories 


‘Such as the wholesome mothers tell their boys.’ 


Melor of the Silver Hand 

AND OTHER STORIES 
OF THE 

BRIGHT AGES 


Rev. DAVID BEARNE, S.J., 

Author 0/ ** Charlie Chittywick” ‘^Ridingdale Flower Show/’ 
‘ ‘ The Witch of Ridingdale, ” etc. 


New York, Cincinnati, Chicago 

BENZIGER BROTHERS 


PRINTERS TO THE HOI.Y APOSTOWC SEE 
1907 




0 


UjBKARY of CONGRESS 
Two Cooles Received 

AUG 23 »90r 

Copynsfht Entry 

COPY B. 


Copyright, 1907, by Benziger Brothers. 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

Melor of the Silver Hand 7 

The Brother of the Apples 20 

Good King Wenceslaus 30 

The King of Alms 36 

Gisli the Icelander 49 

The Smiling Saint 58 

News of the Nowell 64 

A Beloved Pupil 75 

A Child of the Camp 83 

A Minstrel’s Ministry 92 

A Mighty Struggle iii 

St. Bernard and the Knights 117 

Lovers of Learning 120 

From Fold to Fold 130 

Frobert the Simple 139 

Sheer Pluck 148 

The Story of Ephrem 160 

The Bishop’s Dinner 173 

St. Wulstan and the Chorister 175 


5 





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MELOR OF THE SILVER HAND. 


V ERY long ago there lived in a Cornish monastery a 
boy named Melon He was an orphan and his father 
had been a Cornish prince, reigning happily enough until 
his own brother, Rainald, revolted against him and put him 
to death. And indeed if the Bishops and clergy of those 
parts had not used all their influence with Rainald and 
implored him to spare the life of his nephew, Melor him- 
self would have shared the fate of his father. 

But although the wicked usurper permitted the son of 
his murdered brother to live, before sending him into one 
of the Cornish monasteries to be brought up, Rainald 
hacked off the poor child’s right hand and likewise his left 
foot — partly, no doubt, from the motive of revenge, partly 
in order to make the boy incapable of bearing arms in 
future years. 

Now in the remote days of the fifth century artificial 
limbs were not very skilfully constructed; yet the good 
monks in whose care Melor was placed, full of pity at the 
sight of a young and comely boy so sadly mutilated by his 
own uncle, set to work to contrive for him a new hand and 
a new foot. And as he was the son of a prince they decided 
that the hand ought to be made of pure silver, while the 
foot should be wrought in brass. 


7 


So in spite of the loss of two such valuable limbs, the 
boy Melor grew up happy and contented, joining in all 
the games of his schoolfellows, and showing himself more 
diligent than some of them in the abbey school, and always 
attentive and devout within the stalls of the minster choir. 
Even the wildest of those rough Cornish lads loved and 
respected him too much ever to laugh at his lameness, or 
to jeer at the noise poor Melor could not help making on 
the hard stone floors with his heavy brazen foot. It may 
be, too, that they respected the swing of that silver hand, 
for Melor was strong and brave, as his father had been, 
and had no reason to fear aught that might befall him — 
saving treachery. So magnanimous was the boy that on 
the rare occasions when a fight was forced upon him he 
would use only his hand of flesh. Seldom, however, did 
boys of his own age challenge him to such unequal combat. 

But indeed there was small reason for any but the most 
ill-conditioned to quarrel with the princely lad who made 
so light of his misfortunes, and the cruel treatment of the 
uncle whose prisoner he actually was. 

Just precisely when a strange story began to circulate 
among the abbey scholars no one could rightly say. But 
like most rumours it grew greatly by repetition, losing 
nothing by being whispered into one ear after another, and 
discussed in quiet corners of the cloister or in the intervals 
of games. Some boys spoke of it in a scared, awe-struck 
way that frightened their listeners, and forced them to 
regard Melor in an entirely new light. One or two of the 
most ignorant, and therefore the most superstitious, began 
to avoid the boy of the silver hand. A few who were 
devoured by curiosity watched him in an eager, fascinated 


8 


way which but for his absence of self-consciousness he 
would have found embarrassing. Not one of his com- 
panions had the courage to ask him if what they had heard 
was actually true. 

The rumour was that the young prince was beginning to 
use his silver hand as though it were a living limb! 

One boy had seen him catch a ball with it: another had* 
beheld him use it to pluck the wild roses from the briars; 
another had caught him in the act of clasping his beer-cup 
in the refectory; another was ready to declare on oath that 
in a recent game when he took hold of the metal hand it 
returned his pressure and gently closed upon his own 
fleshy fist. 

However honest and good a boy may be he can never be 
liked by all. Every man, every boy is sure to have his 
enemies and detractors. One lad who had once forced a 
fight upon Melor — only to be ignominiously beaten by the 
one hand of flesh — roundly declared that sorcery was at 
the bottom of this strange mystery of the moving of metal 
fingers, and that such a lad ought not to be harboured in a 
cloister school. Retailing his suspicions to a friend, a lad 
who also had a grudge against Melor, the pair denounced 
the young prince to their master, a holy monk named 
Jerome. 

Father Jerome rebuked them severely. 

‘'My sons,'' he said, “you are acting as the acolytes of 
Satan. Your suspicions are as silly as they are wicked, as 
foolish as they are unfounded. Melor's life is too pure and 
good, much too well-known for its virtue and sincere piety, 
ever to be subjected to such a calumny as this. To a boy 
who is as dear to the good God as Melor undoubtedly is, 


9 


everything is possible, and though I do not say that any 
miracle is taking place amongst us — myself, I have seen 
nothing of what you hint at — I should not be in the least 
surprised if our Lord put life and virtue into that poor 
lad’s silver limb. What, however, I suspect is that as he 
grows older — his thirteenth birthday is just past — he be- 
comes more and more dexterous in the use of his artificial 
hand. If men are often deceived as to the nature of the 
things they think they see, and if the expert use of any 
limb may at times deceive the quickest eye, it is small 
wonder if young and inexperienced boys like you should 
deceive yourselves. However, let me hear no more of 
such wicked suspicions, or I promise you your penance will 
be worth the doing. Above all things I forbid you to make 
any mention of this to Cerialton.” 

Now Cerialton was, in a certain sense, Melor’s gaoler. 
A creature of Rainald’s court, Cerialton was responsible 
for the safe custody of the usurper’s nephew. Whenever 
the boys left the abbey precincts, as they frequently did, 
this tool of the murderer was bound to accompany and to 
keep a sharp eye upon his charge. Outwardly he was kind 
enough to the child, and indeed but for the fear he had of 
his master, Prince Rainald, he would gladly have shown 
loyalty and affection to the son of the murdered prince. 

Melor himself had no sort of fear of his keeper. Indeed, 
the lad knew not what fear was. So whenever they went 
abroad he chatted as gaily to Cerialton as to any of the 
monks, or as to any of his companions, sharing with the 
man the spoils of the expeditions, fruits or flowers, nuts 
or berries, according to the season of the year. 

Much forest land lay within a little distance of the 


10 


monastery, and the boys delighted to explore the dense and 
pathless woods in spring and summer, sometimes losing 
themselves in the dark, cool, formless aisles where only 
birds and beasts, trees and flowers were ever found. Yet 
to many of them the autumn time was especially sweet on 
account of the great store of nuts upon which they could 
not only feed at will but fill their bags and satchels with a 
harvest that would serve them well during the long, cold 
months of winter. 

It happened on a lovely October day, the first of the 
month, as the boys swarmed hither and thither in the wood- 
land, laughing and shouting from pure joyousness and 
stripping the hazel boughs of their already ripened treasure, 
that Cerialton, keeping a keener eye than usual on Melor, 
seemed extraordinarily moody and silent. Indeed some who 
noticed the face of the miserable man on that afternoon 
saw in his countenance an expression of fear and anxiety 
that they had never beheld before. 

Melor himself was conscious of nothing but the stir and 
bustle of the outing, the beauty of the day, the hilarity of 
his companions, and the rich harvest of nuts that he and the 
rest were reaping. Climbing tree and bush as nimbly as 
any squirrel, the lad showed himself equal to the quickest 
of his schoolmates in seizing and stripping the heavily 
laden boughs. Apparently solicitous for his safety, Cerial- 
ton stood ever at the foot of the tree until his young charge 
had descended. 

More than once the man turned pale with fear: his legs 
shook beneath him and he was compelled to steady himself 
by leaning against the trunk of the tree. He had seen, or 
thought he had seen, the boy clasp the bough and pick the 


nuts with his silver hand as neatly and as easily as though 
the limb were of living flesh and blood! 

Long ago he had heard the strange rumour, and only 
yesterday he had carried it to his master the prince. The 
usurper had shown both rage and terror. 

“It needs but this,'' he had said to Cerialton, “to take 
away the very last support to my rule. Already you have 
reported to me that the boy is brave and clever, virtuous 
and pious, loved by the monks and by his companions. It 
needs but the rumour of his possession of a miraculous hand 
to make him worshipped by the people as a saint. Cowardly 
cur that you are ! do you not see what your duty is in such 
circumstances as these? Or must I myself come to the 
monastery and hack the pair of you in pieces with my own 
two-edged sword?" 

The creedless are always the credulous, and the most 
guilty are always the most superstitious. Cerialton was 
consumed with fear. His whole soul revolted against the 
idea of murdering in cold blood a pure and innocent child. 
Yet that if he did not do so his own life would be forfeit 
he knew but too well. If only he could deny this strange 
and uncanny rumour ! If only he could report to his master 
that there was no sort of truth in the report that the silver 
hand was supple and prehensile! 

Yet, alas for him! his own eyes now witnessed the won- 
der. So overwrought was he by superstitious fear that as 
he gazed at the boy sitting astride a bough, it seemed to 
him that the silver fingers were far more dexterous than 
those belonging to the hand of flesh and blood. 

“There are too many of us here, Melor," said Cerialton 
as the boy jumped from the bough with a great thud of his 


12 


brass foot on the earth. ^‘Let us go a little deeper into the 
forest. Down here the nut-trees are particularly well- 
laden. Yes, bring your sack and satchel, we may need 
them.” 

Chatting brightly to his keeper the boy plunged with 
him further and further into the dark interior of the wood- 
land. 

‘‘But, Cerialton,” said the boy, “it looks so very gloomy 
yonder. I doubt if I shall be able to see the nuts.” 

“ Twill be lighter presently,” the man answered shortly. 

“At any rate,” laughed the boy as he disentangled his 
metal foot from a dense growth of brambles, “the others 
have not been here. I doubt if any man or boy has ever 
come so far before. There is no sign of a pathway, is 
there ?” 

“We shall come across a pathway very soon,” said Cer- 
ialton. 

“I don’t see any hazels here about,” remarked Melor, 
peering through the thick autumnal foliage. “How the 
leaves have fallen in some places ! And in others how they 
cling to the trees — just as we cling to life, Cerialton.” 

The boy was walking a little ahead of his companion, 
holding a briar here and a branch there that it might not 
be in the way of the man, whose ashy haggard face he did 
not look at. 

“Give me your bag,” the gaoler said suddenly. “No, not 
the sack, the book satchel.” 

“Really, - Cerialton, I don’t think we can get much 
further,” said Melor as he took from his shoulder the 
satchel which hung by a strong leathern strap. “We should 
need an axe to force our way through this undergrowth.” 


“If it gets too thick I’ll cut it away with my dagger,” the 
man muttered in a low tone. He had already taken the 
weapon from its sheath and, unperceived by the lad, was 
cutting off the strap of the satchel. O but that long dagger 
was keener than a butcher’s knife. 

Suddenly Melor gave a little cry. His arms had been 
seized from behind and already the leathern thong was 
binding the hand of silver to the hand of flesh. 

"Cerialtonr was all the boy could exclaim as the man 
seized him roughly and began to bare his throat. For one 
long moment the liquid eyes of the child rested upon the 
face of the man — a face upon which murder was written 
large. Then the lad shut his eyes and prayed. 

“Sweet Jesus ! pity and forgive me — as I forgive Cerial- 
ton and my uncle,” he murmured. 

And even as the words rose to Heaven the dagger fell, 
and a pool of blood was dyeing the yellow leaves with a 
lurid crimson. 


A certain courage came back to the murderer now that 
his victim lay stiff and stark at his feet. The afternoon had 
waned : twilight had fallen and the woodland was very still. 

Cerialton told himself that he had a duty to perform. 
He must lose no time in giving his master some positive 
proof of Melor’s death. To carry the entire body to court 
was impossible : he would cut off the head and bear it with 
all speed through the gathering darkness of the autumnal 
day straight to the feet of Rainald. As for the body, what 
better tomb could it have than this untrodden spot of 
forest land? Soon would the showers of falling leaves 


cover it with a pall of crimson and russet and hide it for 
ever from the face of. man. 

So away sped Cerialton upon his horrible mission, trying 
in vain to get comfort from the thought that however great 
was the crime he had committed he had at least done his 
duty to a tyrant master. Away he ran with his dreadful, 
if sacred, burden, scarce noticing that he was plunging 
deeper and deeper into the forest — until he found himself 
confronted with a darkness so pitchy and a growth of 
brambles so dense that he was fain to retrace his steps. 

Even when after a protracted journey through the forest 
he found himself on the highway, the road he had to 
traverse was long and difficult. Though he dreaded the 
thought of meeting any human being, the darkness and the 
solitude weighed upon him heavily. An almost unbearable 
thirst afflicted him; yet even when at long intervals he 
found himself near a dwelling-house he dared not venture 
to beg a cup of water. Through the darkness of a starless 
and a moonless night the soft, pleading eyes of Melor 
seemed to look into his own. 

O to be rid of the terrible burden that he carried in the 
bag upon his shoulder ! O to find, what he knew could not 
be found in the region he was traversing, a priest to shrive 
him from his awful sin ! Gladly, now that he came to con- 
sider the matter, most gladly would he have given his own 
life if by so doing he could have saved that of this innocent 
and affectionate boy. 

To Cerialton, as he made his unsteady way through the 
darkness, it seemed as though one of the tortures of hell 
was already afflicting him. His thirst was intolerable. Al- 
most maddened by his intense longing for drink he cried 


out: ‘‘Wretch that I am! I shall die by the roadside for 
want of a drop of water.” To his intense astonishment a 
voice seemed to answer him out of the darkness- — nay, to 
be speaking almost in his very ear : “Cerialton, strike the 
ground near you, and you will find a spring.” 

In an agony of fear he dropped the bag with its sad 
burden to the earth. Whatever the fact may have been, to 
him the voice was the clear, sweet treble of Melor, whose 
living tones had so often and so lately fallen upon his ear. 
Yet, startled as he was, so terrible was the agony of his 
thirst that he began to grope about in the darkness and to 
strike the ground with his staff. And behold ! on his right 
hand ran a stream of pure water — of which he made haste 
to drink. 

It was nearly midnight when Cerialton reached the 
prince’s palace and demanded immediate audience with his 
master. 

Rainald had retired to rest but was lying awake, plotting 
and planning how best to make secure the throne to which 
he had no right. No sooner did he hear of Cerialton’s 
arrival than he ordered him to be admitted. 

“Sire,” began the murderer, placing his bag upon the 
floor, “the deed is done. Behold the head of Melor!” 

Eagerly did the usurper stretch out his hands to take the 
yet bloody relic of his brother’s son. Fixedly did he look 
upon the beautiful face of the boy who, however violent his 
end, had died in the grace of God and at peace with all men. 

“It is enough!” exclaimed the prince at length. “Take 
it out of my sight. Give to it and to its trunk the burial of 
a prince, I am not well, Send my servants to me.” 

i6 


Even as he had gazed at the still features of the murdered 
child he had sickened and fallen into a mortal complaint. 

Three days afterwards Rainald appeared before the 
Judge of the living and the dead. 

Cerialton did not linger at court. On the very morning 
after his arrival he set out early for the forest in which lay 
the body of Melor, carrying with him the severed head, and 
determined in his bitter sorrow and penitence that he would 
not rest until the young prince had received the obsequies 
of a Christian. 

Morning was somewhat advanced when he plunged into 
the woodland and began his sorrowful search for the head- 
less corpse. Deeper and deeper he made his way until the 
shadow of thickly planted trees led him into the dark gloom 
of the thicket in which he had committed his terrible crime. 

Suddenly he stopped — blinded and bewildered. There 
could be no doubt that he was approaching the scene of 
the crime, and yet — just at the point where yesterday the 
shadows had been so dense that even the strong afternoon 
sunlight could not pierce them, a brilliant white light bathed 
the little hollow in its beauty. 

Trembling with fear, he pushed his way through thorns 
and brambles, thinking at every step of the terrible death 
march he had let the unsuspecting boy not many hours 
before. As he advanced the light increased. White indeed 
was the lovely radiance, yet tinged and shot with gold. 

Pressing on in his eagerness to see if possible the source 
of this wonderful illumination, his first thought was that 
the monks of the abbey had found the body and were 
preparing to sing its dirge in the forest. Or, he asked 


17 


himself, were they making ready to bury the poor innocent 
in the very place where they had found him lying? For 
the light seemed now to be that of many waxen torches. 

Tapers indeed there were, lighted tapers beyond counting. 
But who were the white-clad bearers of these innumerable 
candles? Surely they were not the dead boy’s school- 
fellows! Young indeed they seemed to be, but how utterly 
unlike the rough, shock-headed Cornish lads of the mon- 
astery school. Boys they undoubtedly were, but surely 
such radiant spiritual countenances as these were never 
worn by mortal children ! Was it possible that Heaven had 
sent its bodyguard of youthful angels to watch the headless 
trunk of Rainald’s victim? 

A vision of blinding beauty in very truth it was — too 
dazzling for the unhappy wretch who vainly endeavored to 
reach the outer ring of these celestial watchers. With a 
great cry for mercy Cerialton flung himself face-forward 
upon the earth, and lay there confessing his sin and im- 
ploring the forgiveness of Heaven. 

Whether he had swooned or only slept he knew not. 
Somebody was bending over him, and the kind voice of 
Father Jerome was in his ear. Slowly raising himself to 
a kneeling posture, he exclaimed, ‘Tor the love of God, 
Father, hear the confession of a sinner whose guilt is 
greater than he can bear !” 

Even while he made his confession he was conscious of 
the tramp of many feet in the immediate neigborhood. 
Long before he had finished, the chant of the Miserere 
assured him that the monks and boys were already bearing 
the body of Melor to the abbey. Sorrowfully yet sooth- 
ingly the wail was borne back to him on the noonday air, 

i8 


the deep voices of the monks alternating with the piercing 
treble of the lads, and turning the dim woodland into a 
temple of prayer and supplication. Away in the distance 
the lights of many funeral torches glimmered through the 
trees, and when the Miserere ceased, a brighter, gladder 
chant rose jubilantly enough to Heaven, the canticle of 
praise and thanksgiving that is used at the obsequies of 
innocent little ones — Benedicite, omnia opera Domini, Do- 
mino: laudate et super exaltate eum in saecula. 

It need not surprise us that the voice of the people 
canonized the poor child whose life had been pure and 
holy, and whose death had been so cruelly sad. Wonderful 
things were spoken of and believed by the simple Cornish 
folk of those remote times, and to this day it is told how 
all through the dark October night that followed upon his 
murder, the dark wood was lit up with a heavenly light, 
and the forms of angel children were seen kneeling around 
the headless body and hovering over the spot that was 
soaked with its life-blood. 

Many years afterwards some, if not all, of Melor’s relics 
were carried to the little town of Amesbury in Wiltshire, 
where a Benedictine nunnery was founded by Elfrida, the 
widow of Edgar, who thus tried to make some expiation 
for the assassination of her own son at Corfe Castle. The 
pre-Reformation church in this old-world town still retains 
its ancient dedication to Our Lady and St. Melor — or 
Melorius, as it is sometimes written. 

The unhappy Cerialton gave himself up entirely to 
penance, leading the austere life of a hermit and never 
ceasing to implore the mercy of God and the intercession 
of the holy boy whose life he had so ruthlessly taken. 


19 


THE BROTHER OF THE APPLES. 


I. 


IE wistful looks of the children as they passed the 



1 fruit-filled orchard troubled him. The longing looks 
of them — the half-averted gaze of the sorely-tempted — the 
shamefacedness of the scrupulous among them, who feared 
they had already broken the tenth commandment: all this 
disturbed the soul of the old Gardener-Brother. 

In truth, a good man this Brother Godfrey and an arbori- 
culturist of repute, great in grafting and pruning, wonder- 
ful in his knowledge of the ways of trees. Doubtless the 
orchards of Glastonbury bore marvellous fruit; certainly 
the laden boughs of Malmesbury made pictures (as well as 
pies) for the pilgrim; the apples of Croyland had name and 
fame throughout the land ; the pears cultivated by the good 
Cistercians of Wardon,^ and the huge Wardon-pies made by 
these non-meat-eating monks, were in renown. But for an 

' “The horticultural skill of the Cistercian monks (the greatest of medi- 
aeval gardeners) of Wardon in Bedfordshire, a foundation dating from the 
1 2th cent., produced at some early but uncertain time, a baking variety of 
the pear. It bore, and still bears, the name of the abbey ; it figured on 
its armorial escutcheon 3 Wardon pears, or^ two and one) and supplied 
the contents of those Wardon-pies so often named in old descriptions of feasts, 
and which so many of our historical novelists have represented as huge 
pasties of venison and other meats suited to the digestive capacities of 
gigantic wardens of feudal days. It is time, in justice to those venerable 
gardeners, that this error should be exploded. Their application to horti- 
cultural pursuits, even up to the Dissolution, is honorably attested by a 
survey of their monastery, made after that event.” — Volema pira (Wardon 
pear) is mentioned in Alex. Neckham’s De Laudibus Sapientice — The Clown 
in JVinter's Tale says: “I must have saffron to color the warden-pies.” 


20 


orchard that was verily a forest of fruit and a natural clois- 
ter of incomparable coolness, I sing the praises of that of 
which Brother Godfrey was the guardian. 

It was not an apple-garth of yesterday. Planted when 
were built the great cloisters that, on one side at least, were 
its boundary, it contained many a tree past bearing, many 
a bough that the coming winds of winter would bring to 
earth, many a gnarled and twisted trunk upon which only 
the mistletoe flourished, many a, moss-grown hollow bole 
that the woodmen would fain have removed. 

But what booted it, asked Brother Godfrey, that a few 
useless trees should stand here and there among the laden 
boughs that filled the croft from end to end? Had they 
not once yielded fruit to the eater? Yea, and to the thirst- 
ing traveller the cool and sparkling cider. 

No mere hive of drones was this big Benedictine abbey 
in the sweet west country — once a wilderness of weeds and 
a tangle of thorns, overrun by the wolf and the wild boar. 
Coming to it when he was himself a young boy. Brother 
Godfrey had found it much as it was to-day : a little more 
perfect in detail now, perhaps, somewhat larger in area, and 
its walls filled with an ever-growing community. He had 
begun his life as a garden-boy, and, coming in the autumn- 
time, in this month of rich September, the first task appointed 
him had been the stripping of some of these very boughs. 

Fifty years ago ! yet how well he remembered it. Nay, 
the recollection made him smile; and when the good lay- 
brother smiled he looked the man he was — a happy and 
a holy monk. Yet, holy man as he was, he smiled at the 
recollection of a fault : at nothing less than his first breach 
of the Rule. For unthinkingly as he plucked the rosy fruit 


21 


from the boughs, he had lifted an apple to his mouth — ^had 
tasted it and found it honey-sweet and good — had eaten 
it with relish and a clear conscience. The Brothers with 
him must have seen the deed; but, honest men! they had 
made no sign either of knowledge or of disapproval. 

Not many days after, it fell out that the novice-master 
reached his instruction on that portion of the Rule which 
forbids promiscuous eating. Then to the seeming enormity 
of his fault were the eyes of the boy-novice suddenly opened. 
He trembled as he sat upon his bench of stone, listening to 
the grave voice of the novice-master. Would it cost him 
the habit to which he so longingly aspired? Would he be 
shut up in the abbey prison for a space, like the truant scholar 
he had seen conducted thither that very morning with the 
gyves upon his feet? Or would he be publicly flogged and 
sent back to his sorrow-stricken parents? 

Fearfully and brokenly, and as one expecting no mercy, 
the boy sought his novice-master and made known his fault. 
Surely in all his life he had not wept so long or so bitterly 
as on that doleful day ! 

And, behold, the young and stem Father Michael listened 
sympathetically, and did not even scold him. Like the dear 
holy Father he ever was, he dried the penitent’s tears and 
gave him the consolation of a saintly instructor : comforted 
and consoled him, even while he explained the rule which 
forbade the eating out of meal-times, and while he gave 
him a trifling penance for his fault. Yes, such a little pen- 
ance! “You will find, my son, that there will be apples on 
the refectory table to-day and, through the bounty of God, 
for many days and weeks. To-day, my child, you may 
abstain from fruit.” 


22 


Not for that day only, but for several days did Brother 
Godfrey punish himself : but O how good the apples tasted 
afterwards ! 

To-day he laughed at the recollection : yet the laughter 
quickly left his face, and he sighed deeply. The thought of 
the wistful looks of the village laddies as they passed the 
orchard-gate, and the remembrance of something that Father 
Ambrose had told him the day before, made Brother God- 
frey sad. 

For the zealous Father Ambrose had the spiritual care of 
the big hamlet outside the abbey gates — “the thorpe that 
lay so close, and almost plaster'd like a martin's nest to those 
old walls" — the village that, like so many proud English 
cities, would never have existed but for the coming of the 
monks. It was Father Ambrose indeed who had to mingle 
in that little outside world, and, like the monk of Arthur's 
time, 

Knowing every honest face of theirs 
As well as ever shepherd knew his sheep, 

And every homely secret in their hearts, 

Delight himself with gossip and old wives. 

And ills and aches, and teethings, lyings-in. 

And mirthful sayings, children of the place. 

That have no meaning half a league away: 

Or lulling random squabbles when they rise, 

Chafferings and chatterings at the market-cross, 

Rejoice, small man, in this small world of his. 

Yea, even in their hens and in their eggs— 

and, be it added, in their apples. 

For the summer had been less sunny than usual, and as 
the village lay at the abbey entrance low down in the valley, 
its little apple-garths had not caught the heat that struck the 
monastery orchard on the slope of the hill, and so this year 
many of their trees were all but fruitless. 


23 


The thought of this troubled Brother Godfrey; nay, it 
hurt him and haunted him. It followed him to refectory 
and dormitory and church. It pained him most when he 
heard the chorus of high eager voices commenting upon his 
own harvest of apples. It came back whenever he heard 
the beat of wooden shoes on the stone floor of the cloister. 
That night before the statue of Our Lady of Pity he spoke 
about the matter long and lovingly to the Holy Child and 
His Blessed Mother. 


II. 

The Sub-Prior was a good man with a dread of children 
and no taste for apples. He was a man indeed with any- 
thing but a healthy appetite for food of any sort, and his 
many infirmities were a much greater trial to himself than to 
those with whom he had to do. An able and a holy man 
was Father Thomas, but one who would never be elected 
to a higher post than that of Sub-Prior. He was in truth 
rather a hard man and difficult to deal with. 

Nevertheless he was Brother Godfrey’s immediate Su- 
perior at the time, and when the simple man spoke to him 
of the abundance of apples, and the many children a good 
God had sent into the world to eat them. Father Thomas 
rebuked him roundly, bade him attend tO' the duties of his 
office and leave the children to those whO' had charge of 
them. 

Now because of the cider that was made in the abbey, 
the Cellarer, always an important official, had ever to be 
consulted in regard to the disposition of apples, and it was 
he who arranged with Brother Godfrey and the Cook as to 


24 


the winter store of this useful fruit. With the Cellarer 
then did the old lay-brother put in his plea for the children, 
hoping that this good Father would try to obtain the con- 
sent of the Prior. 

But the Cellarer took alarm from the beginning. 

‘‘With a big community like ours, Brother, we can't have 
too many apples. It’s simply impossible. There is hardly 
a barrel of cider left from last year. And you’re forgetting 
the number of new novices we have received since last Christ- 
mas — all young, too — most of them growing boys — all 
apple-eaters, in truth. We must feed our own first. But 
I’ll think about it. Yes,” said the Cellarer jingling his keys, 
“I’ll certainly think about it, I will indeed. Brother.” 

Then did Brother Godfrey turn him to the Father Prior. 
It was an unfortunate moment. The good Prior was sorely 
troubled with a debt that was overdue — a debt that could 
not have existed but for the failure of last year’s wheat- 
harvest. 

“You and your children!” he ejaculated, but not ill- 
naturedly. “They want bread more than apples, some of 
them. And when the snow comes, where will they get it 
save at the abbey here? And where shall we get it if the 
winter is long and hard ?” 

The Prior went on his way deep in thought, troubled a 
little by the duties of his office, troubled much by the fear 
of debt; but more than trustful in the Providence that for 
so many centuries had blessed this Damns Dei. 

Brother Godfrey sighed. He had done his best for the 
children he loved, and he had failed. They must go sadly 
and appleless. But he. Brother Godfrey, must get him to 
the orchard and pick up the windfalls of the night. 


25 


Yes, he needed his biggest basket this morning. All dur- 
ing the past long night the wind had roared and raved, until 
at Matin-time it all but drowned the voices of the chanting 
monks. But at Prime it had suddenly subsided, and now 
the sun shone warmly on the sweet September world, drying 
the rain-drops that lay upon the crimson and yellow apples 
like tears upon the cheeks of children. 

His biggest basket ! Yes, but all his baskets would be needed 
to-day. What a rain of ruddy and golden fruit ! The grass 
of the orchard seemed covered with the ripe and juicy apples. 
Speedily did Brother Godfrey fill his wicker hamper : less 
speedily did he bear it to the abbey kitchen. 

There the Brother saw a sight that gave him pause. How 
could he have forgotten so great a vigil ! To-morrow — was 
it not the feast of St. Michael? Of a truth he had not 
thought of it until he saw the young novices, a little crowd 
of them, sitting in the outer kitchens plucking the Michael- 
mas geese. Beautiful birds they were, hatched and reared 
on the abbey farm — big and soft and plump, and with 
feathers white as snow ! And there stood a knot of choir- 
monks from the Scriptorium keenly examining the quality 
of the quills — carefully laying them aside and tying them 
in bundles. 

The sight made Brother Godfrey very glad. He would 
pray to St. Wulstan that neither the thought nor the smell 
of roast goose might visit him within the minster walls. 
‘Tor,'’ thought the simple old man, ‘T might never be able 
to take the resolution of that holy Bishop, and forswear the 
flesh of this bonny bird for ever." 

But the Brother was thinking more of other things than 
of roast goose. 


26 


The feast of St. Michael was one of the greatest of the 
year in this house of strict observance of days of fasting 
and abstinence, as well as of feasts. For it was ruled by 
Abbot Michael, and was it not that holy man’s feast-day ? 

After some necessary conversation with the cook, whose 
need of apples was this morning more pressing than ever, 
Brother Godfrey went back to the orchard, accompanied by 
two young novices with their baskets. They walked in 
silence, but the boys could not but see that the old man 
smiled as he walked. A delightful thought had entered his 
mind, and as he passed a certain apple-tree he stopped and 
looked upon it with growing pleasure. 

Quickly the sturdy boy-novices filled their baskets and 
returned to the kitchen. Then Brother Godfrey, for all his 
sixty-two years, got a big ladder and reared it against one 
particular tree. It was the choicest in the orchard. In the 
Brother’s mind, and in his speech, it was ever “the Abbot’s 
tree.” It was old and gnarled and strangely twisted: it 
bore little fruit, but that little was the most honeyed in the 
entire garth. Year by year on this day it had been Brother 
Godfrey’s privilege to bear a dish of apples to the Abbot’s 
cell ; year by year the gardener had picked the russet-coated 
sweetlings for the Michaelmas banquet. 


III. 

Now the Abbot Michael was very old, and because of 
his great age — ninety-three years or more — the rule of the 
community devolved largely upon the Father Prior. Sel- 
dom indeed was the holy man seen saving at the altar and 
in choir, and though his children loved him well and he 


27 


ever held himself accessible to them, the Infirmarian in 
whose charge he was did not encourage many visits to the 
Abbot’s cell. 

But on his feast-day, after the Solemn Mass at nine 
o’clock, it was known that he would expect to see his sub- 
jects, or rather their representatives, and to receive their 
congratulations. Happy were the monks of the Scriptorium 
who had completed a great Psalter written in black and red 
and wonderfully illuminated, for presentation to their Father 
on this particular day. But equally happy wai Brother God- 
frey, who had asked and obtained leave to carry a silver dish 
of apples to his old novice-master and his lifelong friend. 

Old in years was Abbot Michael, but young in heart — 
youthful with the youthfulness of the saints, joyous with 
the joyousness of the true ascetic. He received Brother 
Godfrey with affectionate delight. 

“Nay, my son, you shall not remain upon your knees,” 
he said, pointing to a stool that stood by his chair. “Sit 
here, my child, and let us talk for a while of past days. You 
are one of the last of my own novices, are you not. Brother ? 
Yes, one of the last. You make me feel very ancient, for 
you yourself are beginning to look old. Yet I remember 
your coming so well — a red-cheeked, curly-headed little lad 
with such a shy smile and such an innocent look. Nay, 
Brother, and the look did not belie you.” 

The venerable Abbot took the lay-Brother’s rough hand 
in his own thin palm, and pressed it affectionately. 

“And you bring me apples,” the Abbot went on: “you 
bring me the fiaiits of your own labor. The same good 
apples too that you have brought me year by year: it is 
wonderful ! This can scarcely happen again, dear Brother. 


28 


The days of my years are almost fulfilled : I cannot expect 
to keep another Michaelmas on earth. My son, I would 
have you ask a boon of me. Never yet have you permitted 
your Father to bestow ought upon you but his blessing : that 
indeed you shall have, but I would entreat you to ask me 
some favor, some ” 

It was at this ix)int that Brother Godfrey surprised both 
the Abbot and himself. The simple man marvelled at the 
rush of words that suddenly flowed from his lips. He did 
not know that a warm heart makes for eloquence, and that 
a great opportunity loosens the strings of speech. But he 
did wonder, both then and afterwards, at his own courageous 
fluency. 

Not forgetting to tell the Abbot of his talk with the 
Sub-Prior, with the Cellarer, and with the Prior, Brother 
Godfrey earnestly and all but tearfully preferred his request. 
He asked a privilege for himself and for all future cus- 
todians of the orchard. Throwing himself again on his 
knees, he begged that a certain measure of apples might 
be reserved for the children of the village — for ever. 

“Call the Prior, the Sub-Prior, and the Cellarer,'^ the 
Abbot said with a smile : “and ask them to be provided with 
parchment and ink and pens.’’ 

And so it fell about that on this feast of St. Michael the 
“Brother of the Apples” received a document granting him 
and his successors “plenary power to bestow upon all and 
sundry of the children of the thorpe, but especially upon the 
progeny of the very poor, abundant and unstinted measure 
of ripe apples for ever.”^ 

^ We know well the name of the Monster who put into his own capacious 
pockets the pious gifts left to the living and the dead— for ever. Into those 
same swollen pockets went the children’s apples. 


29 


GOOD KING WENCESLAUS. 

NE of the greatest misfortunes that cani happen to any 



child is to have a depraved and unbelieving mother. 
Young Wenceslaus, the son of the Ruler of Bohemia, and 
his brother Boleslas, had for mother a cruel and impious 
pagan. Happily for the boys, their father was a true Chris- 
tian, the son of the first Catholic Duke of Bohemia, whose 
wife is known in history as the Blessed Ludmilla. After the 
death of her husband this holy princess lived at Prague, and, 
to her great joy, her grandson Wenceslaus was placed by his 
father in her wise and loving care. Her chaplain became the 
boy’s tutor, and under the guidance of this singularly holy 
and prudent man Wenceslaus soon began to give signs of 
solid piety and lasting goodness. After some years he was 
sent to College at Budweis, a place more than sixty miles 
from Prague, and there he made progress both in learning 
and in virtue, being, it is said, notably careful in shunning 
the things that make for sin. 

When his father died, Wenceslaus was still young, and 
his pagan mother determined to govern Bohemia in his 
stead. Immediately she began to make war upon the Cath- 
olic religion. She ordered every church to be closed, stopped 
the exercise of all Christian rites, and, imitating the conduct 


30 


of Julian the Apostate (.whose impiety is at this time being 
emulated by the French Government), forbade priests to 
give any instruction to the young. Not content with this, 
she repealed all the laws made by her husband and his father 
in favor of the Christians, and in all the towns of Bohemia 
replaced the Catholic magistrates by her own followers. 

Promising him all the help in her power, the grandmother 
of Wenceslaus, Blessed Ludmilla, implored the boy to check 
these outrages by taking his lawful place as the ruler of 
Bohemia. Greatly to the delight of- the people he obeyed, 
and his wretched mother was deposed. His generosity is 
shown by the fact that in order to avoid disputes he divided 
the country between himself and his younger brother. 

Sad to say, this younger brother, Boleslas, was perverted 
by his wicked mother, who was enraged at her deposition and 
determined to be revenged upon both Wenceslaus and his 
grandmother. 

Meanwhile, Wenceslaus chose for his advisers the most 
upright and prudent ministers in his dominions, and did all 
in his power to establish and preserve peace. Like so many 
other saintly princes, he gives the lie to those enemies of 
Jesus Christ who try to maintain that a pious king cannot 
be a good ruler. Religion is for all men, whether their 
character be strong or weak, and it is difficult to say if the 
masterly and self-reliant, or the timid and incapable have 
more need of Divine help. In Wenceslaus there was no sus- 
picion of weakness. His piety was profound. He gave 
his days to business, and his nights to prayer. His devotion 
to the Adorable Sacrament was so remarkable that with his 
own hands he sowed the corn for the altar-bread, while he 
gathered the grapes and made the wine used in the Holy 


31 


Sacrifice/ He usually left his bed at midnight, going to the 
churches to pray even when snow lay on the ground ; and if 
the church doors were shut he was content to kneel in the 
porch. His daily life was filled with works of mercy, both 
corporal and spiritual. Wherever there was want or trouble 
or distress, there the King appeared. Orphans and widows, 
the sick, the dying, prisoners in their cells — all were visited 
and relieved by him. ^‘He ruled his kingdom by his virtues, 
rather than by force,” says the Breviary, and it was the 
greatest possible grief to him when he was compelled to pass 
sentence of death upon the guilty. In the dead of night he 
would go to the prisons and console those who were shut up, 
giving them food and money as well as advice and comfort- 
ing words. It is said that walking barefoot through snow 
and ice his bleeding footprints gave out heat. In some parts 
of England this legend, prettily versified by the late Dr. 
Neale, is well known as a Christmas carol : 

Good King Wenceslaus looked out on the Feast of Stephen, 

When the snow lay round about, deep and crisp and even ; 

Brightly shone the moon that night, though the frost was cruel, 

When a poor man came in sight gath’ring winter fuel. 


’ The following account of the preparation of the bread and wine for the 
altar at Cluny is an instance of the care taken in this matter in the Ages 
of Faith: “There were numberless beautiful rites of benediction observed, as 
that of the ripe grapes, which were blessed on the altar during Mass, on the 
6th of August, and afterwards distributed in the refectory ; of new beans, 
and of the freshly-pressed juice of the grape. The ceremonies observed in 
making the altar-breads were also most Avorthy of note. The grains of 
wheat were chosen one by one, Avere carefidly washed and put aside in a 
sack, which was carried by one known to be pure in life and conversation 
to the mill. Then they Avere ground and sifted, he Avho performed this duty 
being clothed in alb and amice. Two priests and deacons clothed in like 
manner prepared the breads, and a lay-brother, having gloves on his hands, 
held the irons in Avhich they were baked. The very wood of the fire Avas 
chosen of the best and driest. And Avhilst these processes were being gone 
through the brethren engaged ceased not to sing psalms, or sometimes recited 
our Lady’s Office.” 


32 


The King asks his page who the poor man is and where he 
lives ; finding that his dwelling is “a good league hence un- 
derneath the mountain,’’ W enceslaus exclaims — 

“Bring me flesh and bring me wine, bring me pine-logs hither; 

Thou and I will see him dine when we bear them thither 

Page and monarch forth they went, forth they went together. 

Through the rude wind’s wild lament and the bitter weather. 

But in the darkness and the cold the boy’s heart fails him : 
whereupon the good King says — 

‘ ‘ Mark my footsteeps, my good page, tread thou in them boldly : 

Thou shalt find the winter’s rage freeze thy blood less coldly.’* 

Following in his master’s steps, the boy finds that 

Heat was in the very sod which the Saint had printed. 

The King’s revengeful mother was determined that her 
son should have no peace. The grandmother of Wenceslaus 
found that her daughter-in-law was plotting to take her life. 
In no way disturbed, the holy old woman distributed her 
goods among her servants and the poor, made her confession 
and prepared herself for death. Flired assassins found her 
prostrate in prayer before the altar of her chapel and 
strangled her with her own veil. 

Not satisfied with this abominable crime, the King’s 
mother invited Radislas, Prince of Gurima, to invade her 
son’s territory. Anxious to maintain the peace of his 
country, Wenceslaus sent a message to Radislas asking what 
offense he had given him and suggesting terms of reconcilia- 
tion. Radislas treated the message with contempt and an- 
swered that the entire surrender of Bohemia was his only 
condition of peace. 

Physical courage is a great gift : moral courage is a far 


33 


greater one. Wenceslaus had both. He immediately marched 
against the enemy of his country. When the two armies 
met, the Saint asked for speech with Radislas — who was 
soon to be convinced that if sometimes a bad man may be a 
hero — of a sort, a man of God is doubly and trebly a hero. 
Greatly to his surprise, Radislas found himself challenged to 
single combat. “Why should we shed the blood of our fol- 
lowers?” Wenceslaus asked: “let the battle be between us, 
the leaders.” Radislas could not refuse to accept such a 
challenge — a very different matter, be it remembered, to a 
duel. Still despising his pious antagonist, the invader as- 
sured himself of an easy victory. 

Armed with only a short sword, the brave Wenceslaus 
met his country’s foe. The fight was brief enough. Fail- 
ing to fling his javelin, tO' the astonishment of his men, Rad- 
islas threw down his weapons and fell upon his knees. He 
had not struck a single blow. Without a struggle, the in- 
vading King yielded to the saintly and courageous Wences- 
laus. 

The good King’s troubles did not cease with his victory 
over Radislas. Wenceslaus had now to turn his attention 
to his own country. Some of his nobles were oppressors of 
the poor, and this with other disorders the King checked 
with necessary severity. Flis action did not make him pop- 
ular with these unworthy men, and when the unnatural 
mother of Wenceslaus began to plot against her son’s life 
they readily came to her aid and that of the younger son, 
the pagan Boleslas. 

A child had been born to Boleslas, and a pressing invita- 
tion was sent to Wenceslaus to be present at the celebration 
of so important an event. Suspecting nothing, Wenceslaus 


34 


accepted. It was the 28th of September in the year 938. 
The entertainment was on a magnificent scale, but, true to 
his usual habits, when midnight came Wenceslaus went to 
the church. Urged by his mother, Boleslas and some at- 
tendants followed him. The holy King received many 
wounds from the men-at-arms, but it was his own brother 
who, in the end, ran him through the body with a lance. 
The enemies of God and religion triumphed, as they often 
do' for a time. 

To avenge the murder of Wenceslaus, the Emperor Otho 
I. subjugated Bohemia and forced Boleslas to submit. Soon 
after the assassination of her son, his mother lost her life: 
one account seems to suggest that she perished in an earth- 
quake. Terrified by his mother’s fate and the many miracles 
worked at his brother’s tomb, Boleslas caused the Saint’s 
body tO' be translated to the Church of St. Vitus at Prague, 
the church built by Wenceslaus himself for the reception of 
the body of his saintly grandmother. 

It is pleasant to record that the son and successor of 
Boleslas became not only one of the greatest rulers of the 
period, but a faithful follower in the footsteps of his uncle, 
St. Wenceslaus. 


35 


THE KING OF ALMS. 


I. 

I NTO the very heart of this prison on the banks of the 
Seine the April sunshine had forced its way. Even in 
Paris, Paris of the fourteenth century, the influence of 
Spring was making itself felt: yet brighter than the April 
sunlight, more joyous than the air of Spring, was the glad- 
someness that filled the hearts of many of the poor prisoners 
as they realized the near approach of Easter. 

To some, indeed, the glorious feast brought hope of 
liberty, as well as of spiritual consolation. It was certain 
that the King of Alms, as he was called, would pay his 
customary visit,^ and that in honor of the great festival two 
of their number would be unconditionally released ; though 
some knew but too well that for them there was no hope 
of pardon — except from the good God. Yet in the ages 
of Eaith even to the hopeless Holy Church brought her 
consolations, and hard as was the condition of the hundred 
and thirty prisoners, there was not one who might not, if 
he would, be the happier for the coming of Easter. 

It was the morning of Holy Saturday, and in the chapel 
of the prison the Church’s offices were over. A number of 
Franciscan friars were already hearing the confessions of 

^ In some cities two prisoners were always released at Christmas, Easter, 
and Pentecost. 


36 


the prisoners. Walking slowly through the great vaulted 
wards where young and old alike were confined, several of 
the good Fathers were engaged in comforting the sorrow- 
ful, in gently rebuking the obstinate, and in preparing the 
ignorant for their Easter reception of the sacraments. 

“Ah, my Father,’' a poor man was saying to Pere An- 
toine, “do plead with the King of Alms for me. My case 
is such a sad one. I have a wife, and my seven children 
are all young, and I know they are starving. And I am 
not guilty of crime. It is only for not paying the King’s 
taxes I am here.” 

The good friar smiled sadly as he said: 

“My poor fellow, I pity you from my heart. But what 
can I do? So many of you, and only two to be released! 
And you know the King of Alms nearly always chooses 
the youngest and the oldest.” 

“But not always, my Father.” 

“God help you and bless you,” said the friar turning 
away to hide his tears. “Be sure I will do for you what- 
ever is possible.” 

Very slow was the good priest’s passage through the 
ward. Men held and kissed his habit as he moved. Half 
a dozen would speak to him at once, all bent upon seeking 
his influence, all hoping against hope that they would be 
the favored ones of the coming King of Alms. 

Now and again he would pause and make a signal for 
silence. Then he would speak to the crowd in a few tender 
words, begging them not to forget that on the morrow 
One greater than the King of Alms, surpassingly greater 
even than the King against whose peace they had offended, 
was coming to them in His Sacrament of Love. 


37 


His heart ached as he passed on, noticing that always on 
the fringe of the crowd were a number of young boys, all 
eager to attract his attention, all anxious to win his favor 
and his influence with the King of Alms. 

‘‘My children,” he called to them at length, “I will speak 
to you separately. Go and await me at the upper end of 
the ward, where it is quieter.” 

With a great shout of joy they rushed away in a body, 
some thirty or forty lads most of them in their very early 
teens, few of them without a fetter or shackle of some sort. 

If the men had spoken eloquently the boys were not less 
disposed to plead their own cause, and when Father An- 
toine approached them their vociferousness almost stunned 
him. His raised hand silenced them. 

Very gently and touchingly he spoke, telling them how 
grieved he was that he could not release them all. 

“It is so perfectly natural, my poor children,” he went 
on, “that you should long to be free. And for this I do 
not blame you in the least. Yet, my dear ones, for some 
of you it is almost better that you should remain here for 
a time. Some of you have no homes, and if I could obtain 
your release you would not be willing to go to an orphanage 
or to a hospital.” 

One half of them were in rags and showed every possible 
sign of poverty and neglect. Of the rest, some were young 
apprentice lads, well-clad and healthy-looking, imprisoned 
for unruliness and various forms of misconduct. A few 
were sons of citizens, undergoing punishment for different 
breaches of the law — small thefts, wilful damage, stone- 
throwing, and riotous conduct in the streets at carnival 
time. One or two .appeared to be of better quality still. 


38 


and, judging by their dress, might have been the sons of 
gentlemen of rank, or pages in the service of some rich 
noble. Not one of them could have reached the age of 
fifteen: several of them were under twelve. 

As the Father looked over the big group of young faces, 
some sleek and rosy, some pale and sunken, nearly all eager 
and anxious, his eye fell upon a well-grown but young- 
looking lad in the background who seemed to be taking 
little or no interest in what was going on. While the rest 
pushed and jostled one another and tried to get to the 
front, this boy remained quite still, his eyes cast down and 
his hands folded in front of him. He was clad in a rich 
suit of dark red velvet laced with gold, and his long black 
hair framed a face that was distinguished as much for its 
regular features as for the pallor of its complexion. A 
sudden lurch on the part of the crowd left this boy standing 
alone, and the Father then saw that not only was the richly- 
clad lad wearing fetters on both legs but that he alone of 
all the youngsters had manacles on his wrists. 

But time was pressing and the friar could not linger. 

“My children, how many of you have been to con- 
fession ?” he inquired as he turned to leave the ward. There 
was a quick response from every member of the crowd — 
except one. All had been to confession, or were then 
going, saving the boy with irons on his hands. At any 
rate, he made no sign. 

Passing out of the great vaulted room into the corridor 
that led to the chapel, the priest met the head gaoler. 

“That dark-haired boy in red,” began the friar as the 
man knelt for his blessing, “the one who looks like a page, 
and who is more strongly fettered than the others — what 
has he done?” 


39 


The gaoler smiled as he said: “Well, holy Father, I 
don’t think he’s done much more than any other lad would 
have done in the same circumstances. He is one of the 
pages of the Count de Leville, and was in attendance upon 
his son, the young Count, who, if I may whisper it, is the 
spoiled pet of a silly mother. The young lord threw a 
silver dish at this boy — who immediately threw it back 
again. The petted lad was not hurt, but the lady mother 
screamed and had this unfortunate page arrested. Un- 
happily for him, the Count is away at the wars. The lad 
had no one to speak for him, and the judge, who is related 
to my lady, sentenced him to a year’s imprisonment.” 

“Has he been violent since he was brought here?” 

“Not at all. Father — until yesterday. Under great pro- 
vocation, no doubt, he knocked a lad down and was brought 
to me for a whipping — for which however I substituted 
a day in hand-irons. It is unfortunate for him, poor lad, 
since Monseigneur the Governor was going to recommend 
him to the King of Alms as one of the two to be released 
on Monday.” 

“And you think he has forfeited his chance?” 

“My Father, I am not sure of that. It is very probable.” 

“Does the boy know that he was one of the two favoured 
ones ?” 

“No, no, my Father. That is our secret. Beside the 
Governor, only your Reverence and I know of it.” 

“Your secret is safe with me,” said the friar. “What 
troubles me is that he has not been, and does not seem 
likely to go, to the sacraments.” 

“Ah, poor child! He is dejected, perhaps. You have 
not spoken with him privately, Father? But how could 


40 


you in the midst of such a crowd ! Can your Reverence 
spare five minutes?’' 

“I ought now to be in the confessional; but certainly I 
will speak to him if you can bring him here.” 

Side by side, up and down the long cloister-like corridor, 
walked the friar and the boy — whose handcuffs had been 
taken off, though his leg-irons made sad music as he moved. 

“But, my child,” the priest was saying, “it is better to 
be freed from the prison of the soul than from that which 
only confines the body.” 

“My Father, for me it is of no use. It seems only to 
make me worse,” said the boy. “When I made my First 
Communion last Noel, I thought, 'now I shall be really 
good.’ Yet before the Epiphany I was in prison. This 
week I had been thinking about my confession; yet only 
yesterday — and Good Friday too — I got into a big rage 
and struck a boy. You see. Father, for me at least it is 
no good.” 

“What are the Sacraments for, my son?” 

“To bring one the grace of God.” 

“And what is it that at this moment your soul needs 
most ?” 

The boy was silent. 

“Your greatest need, my child, is the very help that you 
seem afraid to seek. Perhaps you heard that some holy 
person once said that one Communion is enough to make 
a saint. You made your Communion, and afterwards you 
discovered that you were not a saint. How old are you ?” 

“On the feast of St. Peter and St. Paul I shall be 
thirteen.” 


41 


^‘Ah, well, my poor child, older people than you have 
made similar mistakes. But now, I want you to see what 
a big mistake it is. It is like refusing food because you are 
hungry, or taking off your doublet because you are cold. 
Nay, if you think of it, it is much more foolish than either 
of these things would be. It is turning your back upon 
your best friend; it is running away from the tender and 
merciful God who loves you. For whom do you think our 
Blessed Lord instituted Confession and Communion — for 
saints or for sinners?’' 

The lad looked up, but hesitated in his reply. 

^'To whom did He first give Holy Communion?” asked 
the friar. 

‘‘To the apostles, my Father.” 

“Yes. And — at that time — were they saints, do you 
think? What did they do on the very day after their First 
Communion — the first Good Friday?” 

“They ran away from Him.” 

“And is that what the saints do?” 

“O no, my Father.” 

“Is it what you are going to do, my child ?” 

A little sob was the only reply. 

“Remember, my son, that our one hope of salvation lies 
through a good use of the sacraments. If we refuse them 
we are lost. Whatever the mercy of God may do for those 
who cannot approach them, or for those who have never 
heard of them. He will do nothing for us if we neglect the 
means of grace that He Himself has provided for us. 

“Whatever may happen to you, however frequently you 
may fall — nay even if, which God forbid, you fell into 
grievous sin on the very day of Communion, go back to 


42 


confession, go again to Communion. This is how weak 
men overcome the snares of the wicked one. This is how 
sinners become saints. Sometimes it is only after many 
humble confessions and devout Communions that the hasty 
and the passionate become patient and gentle. In order to 
overcome yourself, my child, you have only to persevere — 
in spite of failure'' 


For the remainder of that Holy Saturday and during 
the glorious Day that followed it, prison scarcely seemed 
to be a place of punishment. Mindful of that much-needed 
corporal work of mercy many of the faithful had visited 
the imprisoned, bestowing abundant alms in money, in 
food and in clothes. Every prisoner, not a notorious 
criminal, was relieved of his irons. Fresh straw for bed- 
ding was supplied to all. Spring flowers made their way 
into the gloomy vaults. Lutes were tuned and a small band 
of imprisoned minstrels were permitted to go from ward 
to ward singing Paschal canticles. The bells of the Paris 
churches pealed out gloriously, adding their festive message 
to the general jubilation. 

Father Antoine wept for joy as he assisted at the general 
Communion. Only one or two poor obstinate wretches 
had refused the sacraments ; but it is certain that Pierre de 
Gascon, the whilom page of the Count de Leville, was not 
among them. 

Passing down the great vault in which Pierre and the 
rest were confined, the friar found him playing an after- 
dinner game with two or three ’prentice lads. The moment 


43 


he caught sight of Father Antoine he ran to his side and 
reverently kissed his beads. 

“Why,” smiled the priest, ‘‘you are an entirely different 
child. I scarcely recognize you, my son. You look quite 
gay.” 

“My Father, I am very happy,” said the boy gently. 
“Never again will I run away from the good God.” 

“Then, my child, you need fear nothing. Strengthen 
that resolution as much as ever you can.” 

But the lad’s look of gladness was so marked that the 
friar began to wonder if the Governor had already told 
the young prisoner of his possible release. 

“Are you thinking of to-morrow, Pierre? and of the 
King of Alms?” 

The lad laughed gaily as he answered: “O no, my 
Father. For me there is not the least chance. If a boy is 
set free it is generally the youngest — unless he is very bad 
— and there are seven — eight — yes, I think nine, who are 
younger than I am.” 

“Yes, yes,” said the priest. 

“But I do hope that poor man over there — the one who 
is sitting near that pillar. Father — will be one of the two. 
His wife came to see him yesterday and she wept so bitterly. 
One of their children died last week, and another is very 
sick and is crying out for his father. It does seem so sad. 
And the man is only here for a debt.” 

“Poor fellow!” exclaimed the priest. “But you are 
right, my Pierre, to wish for his release. Only, alas ! there 
are several similar cases. There is a man in bed whose 
only hope of recovery lies in his release.” 

“I wish, O how I wish,” began the lad and hesitated. 


44 


‘‘What do you wish, my child?” 

“Well, father, I do so wish I could persuade the boy who 
will be released to give his chance to one of these men. But 
of course that is too much to expect, isn't it?” 

The friar looked at the boy keenly and without speaking. 

“O for me it wouldn’t matter, because, you see, my 
mother is dead, and my father is at the wars with the 
Count. But I know that some of these boys have fathers 
and mothers who will be so unhappy until their sons are 
released.” 

“And would you really give your own liberty for one of 
these two men, my son?” 

The boy laughed merrily as he said : “But, my father, of 
course I would. Unfortunately, I shall not have the 
chance.” 

“You would not wish me to say this to the Governor, 
I think?” 

“But if there were the least chance for me, mv Father, I 
would implore you to do so,” said the boy. 

Monday morning came, and again the bells of the 
churches pealed out. A band of trumpets in the courtyard 
of the prison told of the arrival of Le Roy de VAumone, 
and the excitement among the prisoners grew painfully 
intense. 

Expecting nothing for himself, Pierre the page stood on 
the fringe of the crowd of prisoners waiting for the 
trumpets to cease, waiting tremblingly for the proclamation 
of the herald of the King of Alms. 

A great shout arose as the first name was announced, a 
shout of approbation, for Jacques Aubon, the man whose 


45 


dying child was calling for him, had the sympathy of 
many. Vociferously enough did Pierre shout with the rest. 

But when the applause had subsided and the herald in 
his stentorian voice called out the name of Pierre de Gas- 
con, the bearer of that name staggered and fell on the 
stone floor in a deep swoon. 

When Pierre recovered consciousness he found himself 
lying on a silken couch in a tapestry-hung chamber. The 
Governor’s wife was holding his hand, and the Governor 
was bathing his temples. 

‘‘So!” exclaimed the latter as the boy opened his eyes. 
“Ah, that is good! We shall soon be well again, eh? Take 
this, my brave one!” 

Pierre sipped the cordial, glancing at the man’s face as 
he did so. The Governor was certainly smiling, but neither 
his words nor his smile seemed to be ironical, and his 
manner was fatherly and kind. 

“Poor little one!” cried the lady as she bent over him 
and pushed the long hair back from his forehead and eyes. 
“Poor little brave one! O but your color is coming back 
quickly. You will soon be quite well. Yes, you want to 
ask questions, do you ? Your eyes are interrogatory. Well, 
well, my child, everything is quite as you would wish it. 
The good Pere Antoine told us of your generous desire. 
The poor sick prisoner is free. I shall call you my brave 
one once again. Ah, you can sit up ? That is good. Now, 
another sip of this fine cordial.” 

But there is no cordial in the world like timely-bestowed 
praise, and Pierre was already beginning to feel strong and 
glad. 


46 


“Yes, the two men are released,” said the Governor, an 
hour later, when Pierre declared that now he felt quite well 
and able to walk. My lady had apparently left the room. 
“And you, my poor child, remain a prisoner,” the man 
went on. ‘‘Ah, that is sad.” 

“But, Monsieur, it would have been sadder for him.” 

“You think so? Well, well, that is as it may be. And 
you feel now that you are quite ready to go back to prison?” 

“Quite ready, my lord,” said Pierre jumping up from 
his seat. 

The Governor suddenly turned away his head. His 
eyes had fallen on the boys’ hose, much worn about the 
ankles and showing unmistakably where the friction of 
fetter-rings had frayed them. 

“How long have you to remain in confinement?” asked 
the man, still looking away from Pierre. 

“Not quite nine months, my lord.” 

“Nine months!” ejaculated the Governor. Under his 
breath he muttered, ”Mon Dieu! to a youngster nine months 
is a lifetime.” 

Then something happened so suddenly and so quickly 
that for the moment it took away Pierre’s breath. For 
almost before he realized that Madame had entered, the 
Governor’s wife rushed across the salon, threw her arms 
about the astounded boy and folded him to her breast. 

“My poor little brave one!” she cried, “this naughty 
Governor is teasing you. The good Pere Antoine has just 
arrived with your pardon from the King himself. You are 
my prisoner now. I have put you deep down in the dungeon 
of my heart. Are you content to remain there, my brave 
child ?” 


47 


madame ” Pierre’s speech was broken by a 

sob. 

“Nay, nay,” said the Governor, taking the boy’s hand. 
“Call her — mother. The good God has at length sent us 
a son. Ha — ha! here is Pere Antoine! Come in, my 
Father, and give us your blessing.” 

Not only did Pierre de Gascon become the adopted son 
of the Governor and his wife, but in after-years he succeeded 
to his foster-father’s important and honorable office. 
Known to his generation as the Pitiful Governor, he was 
ennobled by the King, and led a long life of usefulness and 
piety, a life filled with works of mercy and charity. 

But always his watchword was — Never run away jrom 
the good God. No matter how great a criminal he had to 
deal with, or how utterly hopeless might seem to be the case 
of some poor prisoner committed to his care, Governor de 
Gascon gave himself no rest until he had persuaded young 
and old alike to seek again and again the Sacrament of 
Reconciliation and the Sacrament of Love. 



48 


GISLI THE ICELANDER. 


ISLI was fifteen years old, and to-morrow he had to 
^ die. He was sturdy and strong and full of life and 
health as any Norse boy in the land; nevertheless by this 
time to-morrow he would be a corpse. 

And his death would be a violent and an ignominious 
one — that was the hardest part of the terribly hard fact. 
Young as he was, he would have a strong halter knotted 
about his sunburnt neck, and in the sight of his own country- 
men he would swing from the gallows of King Magnus. 

The condemned lad had no more tears to weep. In the 
darkness and the silence of his cell he could do nothing but 
pray. It was true that he had committed a great crime, and 
for that he was truly sorry: yet it seemed to him that at 
least some soul on earth might pity him and allow that the 
sin, great as it was, had not been committed without great 
provocation. But then not every son knew what it was to 
witness the murder of his own father. And — the thought 
would come in spite of his prayers — not every boy would 
have had courage enough to avenge his father’s death. 

Yes, it was a wicked crime that Gisli had committed, and 
he had confessed it with true sorrow. His father was dead ; 
his father’s murderer was dead ; and now he, Gisli, the killer 
of his father’s murderer, had to die on the gibbet. 


49 


More than once in his young and happy life he had been 
face to face with death. On the high seas in storm and tem- 
pest he had waited fearlessly for an end that seemed certain 
and immediate. But the sons of hardy Norsemen were born 
to brave the perils of the deep : many seemed born to perish 
in the waters that, until the Day of Judgment, will never 
give up their dead. An honourable and a happy ending that, 
though to the Norseboy life is always fair and sweet. 

Until to-day, Gisli had not fully realized how desirable 
life could be, and how dear to its possessor. Until the gyves 
had been fast riveted upon his sturdy ankles, and the man- 
acles of steel securely locked upon his brown wrists, he had 
not experienced this complete sense of hopelessness, this 
knowledge of the utter uselessness of any attempt to escape 
his fate, the absolute blankness of soul and feeling that now 
oppressed him. Heavy as was the weight of iron 
upon his limbs he scarcely felt it. Soul and body alike 
seemed numbed, and only the absolute numbness of death 
could be greater. 

Ah, why had not he and his poor murdered father re- 
mained in their Iceland home ? Why had they settled in this 
land of Norway, and under a King so tyrannical as Magnus ? 
Yet they had only done what so many countrymen of theirs 
in that twelfth century were wont to do. Alas for the day 
when they met that murderous servant of the King! 

Here within the precincts of the royal residence were 
many of Gish’s countrymen — ^too powerless, however, and 
too few to help the unfortunate lad for whom the gallows 
was already prepared. Doubtless his one friend, Teit the 
son of Islief, had done what he could; but what power on 
earth could change the will of Magnus? It was the King’s 


50 


servant the boy had slain. It was the King himself who 
had condemned Gisli to the gibbet. 

It seemed to the weary boy that he had slept long and 
heavily, and that he had been awakened by the sound of 
his shackles striking the stone floor as he turned him in 
his sleep. 

But, no. There was a noise of voices outside his cell. 
Perhaps it was already morning, and the offlcers had come 
to lead him to the gallows. It must be, he thought, that 
through sheer heaviness and grief he had spent the half of 
yesterday, and the whole of the night in sleep. 

Now, at any rate, he was fully awake. The voices were 
nearer, and were raised in anger. There was iron striking 
upon iron, and the blows were falling upon the bolted door 
of his cell. 

Was it possible that his friends, his own countrymen, had 
banded themselves together and were coming to rescue him ? 
Surely that was the voice of Teit, the son of Islief. 

Suddenly and with a great crash the cell door was flung 
open, and Teit and his Icelandic followers rushed in trium- 
phantly. 

‘‘Courage, Gisli,” shouted the young man, “you shall not 
die on the gibbet. Now, lads, where are your hammers? 
Off with his irons, quick !” 

Seizing a hammer, Teit himself smashed the iron rings 
that encircled the boy’s ankles, while another broke the hand- 
cuffs that confined his wrists. 

Gisli was free, and with a great shout the party fled from 
the prison. 

Almost immediately they found themselves surrounded by 
the King’s guard. 


51 


“We will shed the very last drop of our blood in defence 
of this child of ouj* country/' shouted Teit, drawing his 
sword and bidding his followers do the same. 

Dazed and bewildered as he was, the newly-released boy 
saw at once that the combat would be an unequal one. Brave 
and intrepid as his countrymen were, they were compara- 
tively few in number, whereas the King's guard was strong 
and well-armed, and its numbers could so easily be aug- 
mented. 

Yet it was a wonderful moment for Gisli. Hope had 
come back to him with a rush. Already he was freed from 
his cell, and from the irons that had confined his limbs. No 
longer was he alone — one poor solitary boy prisoner, con- 
demned to a hateful death. 

But weapons were flourishing in the air, and men were 
advancing one upon another. Of a truth the struggle would 
be a brief and a bloody one. Brave as Teit was he would 
soon be overpowered by numbers. Courageous as were his 
followers it was certain that they would soon be cut to 
pieces. 

vStanding there and fully realizing the sweetness of life 
and freedom, Gisli came to the sudden and truly heroic reso- 
lution that his escape would only be bought at a terrible price. 
He could not, he would not suffer the shedding of his 
countrymen's blood. After all, he thought, the life of a 
boy was a small matter enough compared with the lives of 
these brave Icelanders, 

“Not one of you shall die for me," he shouted in his high 
boyish treble. “Nay, my friends, I thank you from the bot- 
tom of my heart, and T love you for your goodness; but 
not one drop of blood shall be spilled for my sake." 


52 


Wresting himself from the kind arms that would have 
restrained him, the lad sprang forward and approached the 
King’s men. 

“I surrender,” said the boy simply. ‘Take me back to 
prison. Better that I should be hanged upon the gallows 
than that these should die by the sword.” 

Strong hands were instantly laid upon him, and through 
the ranks of his weeping friends he was hurried back to a 
stronger and a safer prison. 

On a great open plain where the Council of the Thing, as 
it was called, was wont to be held, stood the gallows upon 
which criminals were hanged. Great was the crowd assem- 
bled to witness the hanging of the boy Gisli, for not only 
had the King commanded the presence of his entire 
household together with many soldiers, but he had bidden 
every Icelander in the neighborhood to attend the ex- 
ecution. 

The morning was sunny and clear, but cold, and as the 
poor boy was led out of his prison to look upon the beautiful 
earth for the last time, he shivered. Slowly, and with his 
hands bound behind his back with thongs, Gisli walked in 
the midst of a strong guard to the place of doom. Once he 
raised his sea-blue eyes and saw the great crowd of onlook- 
ers, the King sitting in a high and prominent place sur- 
rounded by soldiers. Again he lifted his head and straight 
in front of him was that awful gibbet, the long, noosed rope 
swaying to and fro in the fresh morning breeze. 

Few indeed there were in that big crowd that did not 
pity and compassionate the young criminal. In the breasts 
of his own countrymen, deep sorrow struggled with rage 


53 


and indignation. The lad was to be done to death before 
their very eyes, and they were powerless to deliver him. 

But among the many whose hearts were wrung with pity 
there stood an Icelander whose name was one day to be 
widely known, and whose fame was to extend far beyond 
the northern island of which he was destined to be Bishop. 
The saintly John of Holar had arrived only the night before, 
just in time to hear the sad story of Gish and the account of 
his attempted rescue. 

Already with his friend the King this holy priest had 
pleaded long and earnestly for the life of the condemned lad. 
Made more angry and obdurate by the action of Teit, Mag- 
nus would not listen. Gisli, he said, must die on the gibbet. 
In vain did the priest urge the criminal’s tender years — -the 
terrible provocation he had received on account of the mur- 
der of his own father — the heroism he had shown when he 
had been given an excellent chance of escaping the justice of 
the law. “The brat shall be gibbeted!” was all the King 
would say. 

Overwhelmed with sorrow, the man who was one day to 
be known as St. John of Holar, had joined the crowd at the 
place of execution. Whatever spiritual comfort he could 
give to the poor child, that of course he was only too anxious 
to offer. 

Making his way to the culprit’s side, John noticed that the 
boy was but lightly clad in a leather tunic and that saving 
for the irons that had been left upon them his legs and feet 
were bare. 

“You shall have this cloak, my poor child,” said the com- 
passionate priest as he removed his own mantle and hood. 
Then as he was about to wrap them round the trembling lad, 


54 


John of Holar suddenly remembered that this garment had 
been given to him by no less a person than King Magnus 
himself. Turning away from Gisli for the moment, John 
approached the King, who was seated close to the gallows. 

‘^Sire,’' began the priest, ‘"this cloak was your Majesty’s 
gift to me last winter. Have I your permission to do what 
I will with it?” 

The King gave an angry gesture of assent, and imme- 
diately turning to the boy. Father John began tenderly to 
wrap the garment about him, speaking into his ear words 
of comfort and consolation and encouragement. 

“Be brave in death, dear child, as you have been brave in 
life. The pain will be sharp, but very short. Think now 
only of Jesus Crucified. Though you have sinned, by true 
penitence, my son, you have been forgiven : remember Him 
who, though very Innocence, was hung upon the gibbet of 
the Cross.” 

Lovingly as a mother wraps her child before placing it in 
its cot to sleep did the holy man fold the long cloak about 
the boy’s body — hiding the bound hands and fettered feet, 
and carefully disposing the hood about the neck and 
shoulders. 

Impatiently enough stood the hangman, waiting to fix the 
noose of the rope upon the criminal’s neck. 

The priest embraced him, and gave him the image of the 
crucifix to kiss. 

“Courage, my child,” said John as the boy began with 
difficulty to mount the ladder of death. “Call upon Jesus 
with great confidence and love.” 

Whispered words of absolution were the last sounds that 
fell upon Gish’s ear as the rope was hurriedly affixed. 

y 


55 


A moment afterwards, the body of Gisli was swinging in 
mid-air. 

No need now to linger in the neighborhood of the gallows. 
Far and near could the poor body be seen, looking so small 
as it hung on high, swayed into gentle motion by the 
winds of heaven. 

Yet as the King returned hastily to his castle it was no- 
ticed that his countenance was black as midnight, while the 
faces of the Icelanders were almost joyful. They knew, and 
the King knew, the significance that attached to the hanging 
of Gisli in the royal cloak. 

For in the minds of these rough Norsemen the boy’s exe- 
cution had been robbed of all its ignominy by the fact that 
he had suffered death in a robe that had once been the prop- 
erty of and probably worn by Magnus himself. In spite of 
the King’s implacable anger, the lad’s end could be spoken 
of for all time as an honorable one. 

So, sad at heart as they were, the Icelanders slowly turned 
their back upon the gibbet and returned to their quarters, 
greatly relieved in mind, and invoking the blessing of 
Heaven upon the kindly head of Father John of Holar. 

Father John himself had not yet done with the gallows, or 
with the body that hung thereon. 

Waiting until all was quiet and the great plain was cleared 
of spectators the priest returned to the gibbet. Praying to 
God with great fervor he reared the ladder which had been 
flung upon the ground, and mounted it hastily. 

His task was a difficult one, and he did not cease to im- 
plore the help of Heaven. 

Had he succeeded, or had he failed? Had the hangman 
56 


unwittingly assisted him by a too hasty adjustment of the 
rope, or wittingly out of compassion for the boy himself ? 

The rope was cut. Gently did the priest bear the body 
to the earth. With trembling eager fingers he undid the 
noose. 

^‘Deo gratiasr sang the good man as he unwrapped the 
mantle and severed the thongs that bound the lad’s hands. 
To some pirrpose had he so carefully disposed that hood 
about the child’s throat. It seemed certain that the neck 
was still unbroken. 

Yet Gisli lay stretched upon the green grass, insensible, 
and apparently lifeless. 

“O God,” cried the priest, ‘‘give back to us the soul oi this 
poor child, and I promise that he shall not depart from Thy 
house for ever.” 

A moment later great joy filled the soul of Father John. 
The eyes of Gisli suddenly opened, and he took a long deep 
breath. Then he looked at the holy man and said with a 
smile, “Why did you wake me. Father?” 

“Because, my dearest son, it is time for us to go down 
to the sea,” said the priest, breaking the iron rings upon the 
lad’s feet. “Even now our countrymen are abroad. I am 
going to give you back to God and to your Fatherland.”. 


57 


THE SMILING SAINT. 


O NE Saint makes many. Almost without number were 
the souls that Saint Columban, the great Irish mis- 
sionary of the Seventh Century, led to God ; numerous also 
were the disciples who followed him and who were helped 
by him to reach a state of perfection. Among the latter 
few are more interesting and engaging than Deicolus. 

Very young must the boy have been when he left Ireland 
to settle with Columban in East Anglia ; and when the great 
founder of religious houses passed from England into France 
and began to build the famous abbey of Luxeuil, Deicolus 
could not have been very old. Certainly the lads of that 
period were not wanting in grit. Hard living, hard labour, 
the perils and dangers of travel, immense application to 
study, the performance of the humblest offices — these things 
were the daily bread of the young who gave themselves to 
the service of Christ, the Source of Courage. 

Such a willing, happy service too ! Deicolus himself seems 
to have been the very soul of cheerfulness, one of the many 
beautiful qualities that endeared him to his Abbot. He might 
well have earned for himself the nickname of The Smiler, for 
no matter what work he happened to be engaged in his face 
was always bright and sunny. St. Ignatius once asked a 
young Brother why he was always laughing — bidding him 
in the same breath to persevere in that holy cheerfulness 


which makes for perseverance in all good works. The same 
question was put to the young Deicolus by St. Columban; 
and as the incident has been prettily versified by an anony- 
mous poet, we cannot do better than quote the lines in full : — 

Drawing the water, hewing the wood, 

Deicolus the happy, Deicolus the good; 

Never without a smile on his face. 

Full of a sweet peculiar grace. 

Serving at table, singing in quire. 

Fetching the logs to the great hall fire; 

Teaching the boys their sacred song, 

Smiling, smiling the whole day long. 

His saintly Father, with calm grey eyes. 

Looked on the youth with glad surprise; 

‘ O Deicolus happy, Deicolus good ! 

Tending the sick, or watching the gate. 

Labouring early and resting late. 

Teaching grammar or teaching song — 

Why art thou smiling the whole day long?’ 

Deicolus blushed, and ‘I smile,' said he, 

‘Because no one can take my God from me.’ 


A great sorrow came both to Columban and Deicolus 
when the fierce Queen Brunchant, and her unworthy son the 
King of Burgundy, expelled the Abbot from the monastery 
of Luxeuil. But like the man of courage that he was, 
Columban immediately set off to preach the gospel and to 
found more monasteries elsewhere. Among his followers 
was Deicolus. Bravely they marched away setting their 
faces toward another country, and leaving behind them an 
abbey that soon became one of the glories of France. 

Now from what follows it is clear that although Deicolus 
was so merry and so active he was not very robust. Or it 
may be that even at this period he was still nothing more 


59 


than a growing' boy ; for after they had gone some distance 
on their weary journey, the lad’s bodily strength was ex- 
hausted, and he was compelled to own that he was unable 
to walk any further. To part from his beloved Abbot was 
indeed a hard thing, but it was inevitable. Greatly compas- 
sionating his disciple, St. Columban gave him the permission 
he sought, to lead the life of a solitary. They were still in 
the Kingdom of Burgundy, and no doubt St. Columban 
knew that the comparative fertility of the neighbourhood 
would furnish the young hermit with the necessaries of life ; 
nevertheless, the parting was a very painful one. To say 
'‘Farewell” was a bitter sorrow to both Abbot and monk. 
Shedding many tears Columban said: ‘‘God Almighty — 
out of love to Whom thou didst leave thy native land, and 
hast ever been to me a most obedient child — ^bring us to- 
gether in the Majesty of His glory.” 

Then Deicolus threw himself into the Abbot’s arms, weep- 
ing loudly and long. “The Lord give thee blessing out 
of Sion,” said the Saint, gently disengaging himself from 
the sobbing lad, “and may He make thee to see Jerusalem 
in prosperity all thy life long.” 

For the first time in his life Deicolus found himself in 
actual solitude. Throwing himself on his knees he prayed 
fervently to his Father in Heaven : then he began to pene- 
trate intO' the depths of the forest. He would build for 
himself a little hut far away from the homes of men, and 
there would he live on the fruits of the earth. For years he 
had been accustomed to hard fare, and in the forest he 
would sometimes find berries and nuts. 

Commending himself to God as he went along, he came 
across a swineherd whose pigs were feeding upon the acorns. 


6o 


The man was astonished to see a stranger in such an out- 
of-the-way place; Deicolus told him that he was a monk, 
and that he wanted to build a hermitage in some solitary 
spot where there was a stream of water. The swineherd 
said there was only one such place, and that was close to a 
little lake called Luthra. ^‘Could you not show me this 
place?” asked Deicolus. ‘T daren’t leave my pigs to take 
care of themselves,” the man answered. ‘‘Don’t be afraid of 
that,” Deicolus urged, planting his own staff in the ground. 
“If you will go with me this stick of mine shall keep them 
together until you return.” 

We need never be astonished at thenumber of miracles that 
were worked in those primitive times. The simple, fervent 
faith of the people made them possible, as well as the sanctity 
of the many great servants of God who performed them. 
Fully l)elieving the word of the young monk the swineherd 
brought him to Luthra, returning to find his pigs quietly 
feeding in the neighbourhood of the youth’s staff. 

To the great joy of Deicolus he found not only a lake with 
springs of sweet water but a little chapel dedicated to a saint 
who was greatly loved at that period, St. Martin of Tours. 
The young hermit’s cheerfulness had indeed been much tried 
by the parting with his beloved Father Columban ; but God 
had been good to him in leading him to so pleasant a retreat 
and to the neighbourhood of the forest chapel, and his heart 
was full of thankfulness. 

But Deicolus soon had reason to remember that the chapel 
was private property. It belonged to a gentleman named 
Weifhardt, and was served by a priest who was anything 
but an amiable man. One day when the monk went to make 
his usual prayer, he found that the door and the windows 


6i 


had been filled with thorns and brambles. Disregarding 
these impediments, Deicolus entered the chapel. When the 
priest heard of it he told Weifhardt, who flew into a rage 
and ordered his servants to find the hermit and give him a 
severe flogging. Unfortunately for their master, the men 
obeyed him literally, and almost immediately afterwards he 
was seized with a complaint that threatened to be fatal. His 
good wife Berthilda, not doubting but the disease had been 
sent as a punishment for her husband’s cruel conduct to the 
hermit, sent her servants to implore Deicolus to visit the 
castle. With all haste the holy man obeyed the summons, 
and, praying fervently to God, did not leave Weifhardt until 
he was cured. 

Great good came out of the evil this man had done, for, 
as a thankoffering to God and Deicolus, he bestowed upon 
the hermit not only the little estate of Luthra, but the chapel 
itself and the adjoining wood. Full of gratitude to God, 
Deicolus sang, ‘This is my rest for ever and ever ; here will 
I dwell, for I have chosen it.” 

Soon after this it chanced that the King, Clothaire II., 
came to the forest to hunt. Quietly reading in his cell Dei- 
colus was startled by the sudden appearance of a wild boar 
hard pressed by dogs. Rushing into the hermit’s little ora- 
tory the beast fell panting before the altar, while the monk 
standing at his door confronted the hunters and the dogs. 
The boar had taken sanctuary, said Deicolus, and its life 
must be spared. 

Marvelling at the hermit’s courage, the King asked him 
many questions and soon found that he was dealing with 
one of God’s Saints and a disciple of Columban. It is the 
duty and the privilege of the rich to offer gifts, and before 


62 


the King rode away he had bestowed upon Deicolus the game 
in the forest, the fish in the streams, and the grapes in the 
neighboring vineyards. Then the hermit called to mind 
that Columban had once told him that, before his death, he 
should rule over three kingdoms. Here was the prophecy’s 
fulfilment. 

So now Deicolus had the means to build and to support a 
community. Novices flocked to him in numbers, and his 
house soon became an important abbey. Journeying to 
Rome he returned with a special charter from the reigning 
Pontiff and many privileges. With great gentleness and 
sweetness, and an abiding cheerfulness which endeared him 
to his subjects, he ruled his community for many happy 
years. 


63 


NEWS OF THE NOWELL. 


News of a fair and marvellous thing, 

(The snow in the street and the wind on the door), 
Nowell, Nowell, Nowell we sing! 

HRISTMAS morning in the city of Tours — seven hun- 



drcd years ago. All night long its narrow streets 
have been crowded with wayfarers; all through the morn- 
ing hours its churches have been thronged with worshippers 
of the Holy Babe. Since the cathedral bells rang their 
merry peal for the Midnight Mass, the snow has not ceased 
to fall ; but now at the dawn of day, and as the minster bells 
ring out again for the Mass of the Aurora, the sky begins 
to clear. The silent storm of snow is spent; but what a 
festal garment of white it has woven for house-roof and 
gable, for turret and tower and spire! What a spotless, 
Avool-like carpet it has spread over every street and lane and 
bridge of this royal city! 

Far away from the cathedral, in the chapel of his kingly 
castle, the good Count of Mans has kept a night-long vigil 
with his knights and squires and pages. There he has 
heard the solemn Matins and Lauds of the Nativity, and 
the grand Mass of midnight. There he and his attendants 
have remained until a little before daybreak, only to form 
in devout procession and pass through the snow-covered city 
to the minster walls. 

Banners of silk and gold hang from the cathedral tow- 


ers, and the ringing of its deep-toned bells fills the city with 
sound. Comes mingling with the Christmas chimes the 
blare of silver trumpets, and the muffled tramp of many 
horses on the fresh-fallen snow. The progress of the royal 
party has begun. 

A splendid, shifting scene is this early morning procession 
through the long, narrow, crooked streets of the city, out 
from the gates of the castle built by Henry the Second of 
England, past the huge tower of Charlemagne in which his 
queen lies buried, over the narrow bridge that spans the 
Loire, on to the cathedral founded by the great St. Martin 
— once the Bishop and now the patron, the glory and the 
pride of Tours. A lovely, moving picture, the people think, 
as they crowd the river banks, and line the tortuous streets, 
and press about the minister’s western door. For upon the 
snowy background gleam a hundred ruddy tints — the cherry- 
colored silk of the boy-pages, the scarlet of the men-at-arms, 
the peach-colored velvet of the knights, and last of all the 
royal purple, half concealed with folds of ermine whiter 
than the snow upon the streets. 

Denser grows the crowd as the van of the procession 
reaches the cathedral precincts. It is natural that the people 
of Tours should wish to see their ruler, since it is only upon 
the greater feasts of the Church he comes amongst them. 
Natural indeed that they should wish to gaze uix)n one 
whose greatest pleasure is to do honour to the King of 
Heaven — one who for his own glory would scorn to make 
external show, but whose delight it is publicly to proclaim 
himself the vassal of the King of Kings. 

Already the pages have dismounted and left their horses 
to the care of the grooms, A great space is kept before the 


65 


minster door for the royal entry, but the people press and 
surge about the walls, and many struggle in vain to get a 
foremost place upon the fringe of the crowd. One small 
boy has just succeeded in forcing himself to the front, and 
stands close pressed against a buttress within a few feet of 
the cathedral entrance. 

A pale-faced little lad of fourteen, and by his dress a 
scholar and a cleric. The hood falls back from his head as 
he emerges from the mass of waiting people, and his ton- 
sure is plainly visible. He is shivering with cold now, as 
he stands exposed to the full force of the north wind, and 
his short cassock and thin black mantle are verily a poor 
protection from the biting breeze. Yet it is clear that he 
is radiantly happy. Excitement, or the cold, has brought a 
faint tinge of color to his pallid cheeks, and his dark eyes 
shine and glisten as he assures himself that he is within 
easy reach of the great porch and that there is no fear of 
his being unable to follow the procession once it has passed 
into the cathedral. He is not at all indifferent to the pageant 
that is approaching ; but, although 'he has served at the altar 
of one of the city churches thrice this morning, he longs to 
assist at the Mass of the Aurora in the minster. *^Puer 
natus est nobis/^ he keeps whispering to himself as though 
it were the burden of some sweet song he could not forget ; 
''Puer natus est nobis, et Filius datus est nobis” : “A Child 
is born to us, a Son is given to us.” The joy of this little 
tonsured cleric is the true Christmas joy. If the Boy so 
lately born bring any other happiness, well and good; but 
it was the birth itself that brought such joy to Mary, and 
that has made the whole world rejoice for twelve hundred 
years. If it bring only cold and suffering — well, did it bring 


66 


other than this to the Boy who was born at midnight ? — Such 
were the thoughts of young Martin the little clerk of Tours, 
as he stood shivering by the minster door at the dawn of 
Christmas morning. 

He had no thought of envy as he watched the rosy-faced 
page-boys in their bravery of white fur and cherry-colored 
silk, walking to and fro between the divided crowd — stamp- 
ing their long fur-lined boots and making their silver spurs 
ring as they did so. Noble-looking lads they certainly were, 
graceful and well developed in form, healthy-looking and 
beautiful in feature; the sons of great lords every one of 
them, yet proud and happy enough to hold the stirrup or 
the bridle of their master, and to serve him in hall with 
basin and ewer, with cup and platter. Pious and good too, 
it may be hoped, since their lord was the model of a Catholic 
prince, and would never knowingly suffer the smallest evil 
to find place in his well-regulated court. But — thought 
young Martin — not one of them is a tonsured cleric. He 
would not change places with any one of them, even if such 
a thing were possible. Far from being of noble birth, Mar- 
tin was the son of a poor weaver living in one of the nar- 
rowest lanes in that great city; yet the King of Glory had 
chosen the weaver’s son to be one of His royal pages. Surely 
it was a greater matter to serve at the altar-table of God 
than to wait upon any earthly king. And if the boys be- 
fore him were looking forward to their knighthood, was 
not he, Martin, waiting longingly for a far more regal order 
than that — nothing less indeed than the order of Melchise- 
dech, the eternal priesthood ? 

Yet there was no pride in the little scholar’s heart as he 
thought of these things. Piter natiis est nobis, was still 


67 


echoing in his mind, and he knew that, before all things, 
Mary’s Boy was humble, meek and loving, and that if he 
would be a true page and faithful knight of the kingly 
Christ, he also must be poor of spirit, and truly humble. 

But now the bells which, for a time, had ceased to peal, 
broke forth afresh, and the notes of the trumpets reached 
the ears of the waiting crowd. The Count was already in 
sight. A little cloud of smoke floated out through the 
cathedral porch, and a whiff of incense (that sweetest of 
odors to the Christian’s sense) sent a new thrill of joy 
through the shivering young cleric. He knew that the pro- 
cession of priests was approaching the entrance from the 
interior, in order to meet the Count and to conduct him 
to his place close to the high altar. 

Martin did not envy his sovereign’s pages, but he found 
it hard to put away the wish that he were one of that 
band of boy-clerics connected with the cathedral of his 
patron St. Martin. He could see the holy water bearer 
from where he stood, as also several of the singing-boys and 
acolytes. How beautiful were the fair white albs and amices 
tliey wore, and how splendid the cloth of gold copes he knew 
the priests were vested in ! Happy boys, he thought, to have 
a part in so great a function. 

“And yet,” said Martin to himself, “their office is the 
same as mine, and the Holy Sacrifice is everywhere the same 
— whether it be offered at the side altar of a small church 
or at the high altar of a great cathedral.” 

The thought comforted him a good deal ; yet he could not 
help looking with a certain longing towards the cathedral 
porch, and wishing that he had an office, however small, 
among the priests and clerics there assembled. 


68 


But now the crowd at Martin’s back began to surge and 
sway afresh, for the knights had already appeared, and close 
behind them was the Count himself. Horses were rearing 
and capering as they were led away by stable-boys and 
grooms, and the men-at-arms were being drawn up in two 
long lines to form a passage for the royal procession. De- 
vout-looking and dignified, yet with a happy smile upon 
his face, the Count rode to within a few feet of where Mar- 
tin was standing. Instinctively the boy felt that the moment 
their prince had entered the porch the people would press 
forward and crowd into the cathedral. Martin thought if 
only he could get within the entrance all would be well. Slip- 
ping quickly past the soldier who was now standing almost in 
front of him, the boy gained the porch, and passing bare- 
headed the group of ecclesiastics, stationed himself far back 
in the corner on the right-hand side of the door. His bold- 
ness startled him when he realized what he had done. The 
Count himself was barely on the threshold, and yet he, 
Martin, had already entered. He blushed a little, but he 
was not afraid of the consequences of his action. The 
cathedral was God’s house, and not the palace of any 
earthly king. Besides, was Martin not a cleric, and could 
he not claim the privileges of his state ? Had he not a sort 
of right to stand there among the clergy, although remote 
from them ? It was true he lacked the choir-dress necessary 
to fit him for a part in the procession; but then he had no 
intention of joining it: all he wished for was a place to 
pray in during the solemn offering of Holy Mass. 

But the boy little thought that the sharp eyes of the Count 
had detected his manoeuvre. Standing now, bare-headed, 
under the great doorway, and bowing low as he received the 


69 


holy-water from the priest — the great lord of Tours paused 
as the procession reformed within the porch and began to 
move forward within the cathedral. Looking straight to- 
wards the corner of the porch where Martin stood with his 
back against the wall, the good Count smilingly beckoned 
to him. Nervously the boy came forward and bent his 
knee. 

‘‘Tell me, my little clerk,” said the Count in a kindly and 
almost jocose tone, — “have you any news for me ?” 

There was silence for a moment during which the trem- 
bling lad looked up into the great man’s face. Its kindly 
expression immediately reassured the little cleric. 

“Yes, sire,” he answered in a low, but audible voice; 
“most excellent news.” 

The Count started. Could it be that the boy before him 
was the bearer of some State secret — a messenger, perhaps, 
disguised as a cleric? 

“Quick then;” ejaculated the Count, “tell me your news!” 

*‘Puer natus est nohis^' (began the little scholar rever- 
ently), Filius datus est nobisF 

Greatly moved and edified, the Count took the boy by the 
hand and raising him from his kneeling posture said : “Ex- 
cellent news in truth, and news for which only the Boy who 
is born can reward you. Let us go then and worship the 
new-born Boy, for Holy Mass is now about to begin. And 
do you, my little clerk, take your place with the cathedral 
clergy. It is meet that the Child who is given to us be 
surrounded, with the children of the Church.” 

Gladly enough would Martin have knelt in a corner of 
the nave, but this was not to be. Passing into the church 
the Count bade him take a place in the stalls of the choir. 


70 


Hesitating’ for an instant, the lad bowed low, and turning up 
the south aisle passed into the sacristy. Explaining the 
Count’s message to the sacristan, the latter immediately pro- 
vided Martin with amice and alb. Vesting quickly, and 
with beating heart, he passed into the choir by a side door, 
and betook himself to the remotest place he could find among 
the clerics of the third form. His heart was full of joy, and 
as the choir began the Introit — Lux fulgehit hodie super nos: 
quia natus est Dominus — his voice shook as he tried to join 
in the singing, and a stream of tears flowed down his cheeks. 
What a delight to find himself, if only for the first and last 
time in his life, so near to the high altar of his beloved 
patron’s church ! On such a day too, and under such ex- 
traordinary circumstances ! 

Certainly our young cleric had a hard fight with distract- 
ing thoughts during the progress of the Holy Sacrifice. Try 
as he would, he could not but think of what had so recently 
happened in the porch of the cathedral. The great Count 
of Mans had spoken to him, and taken him by the hand, had 
smiled upon him, and finally had given him, for one happy 
hour at least, the privilege he most desired, yet one for which 
he scarcely dared to hope. How glad the boy was that the 
church was so huge, and that he was, as it were, lost in that 
great crowd of worshippers. And yet — what a delight for 
his father and mother if they were within the building (as 
he was almost sure they were) and if they could see him 
here in the cathedral stalls ! Well, if these thoughts would 
come back to his mind, no matter how often he put them 
away, at least he was master of his sight. He would not, 
saving at the Elevation of the Host, raise his eyes to look 
at any person or thing. He knew the Count could not be 


far away, for on these occasions a special place was prepared 
for the royal party not far from the altar; but the boy was 
resolved that he would not look away from the gradual 
which lay before him. A wise resolve, indeed! for long 
before the Canon of the Mass was reached, Martin's habitual 
recollection came back to him, and when the great bell tolled 
for the Elevation, he could think of nothing save the mystery 
of the moment, and the words that so sweetly haunted his 
memory: ^'Puer natus est nobis, et Filius datus est nobis F 

Grandly the Holy Rite proceeded to its close, and then 
the boy found himself walking from the choir to the sacristy 
in the great procession of priests and clerics which, on this 
occasion, included every ecclesiastic belonging to the cathe- 
dral. Arrived there, he waited with his brother clerics for 
the signal to unvest. Already the Bishop had passed through 
the kneeling lines of canons and choristers, yet the signal 
was not given. The Bishop was awaiting the arrival of 
the Count of Mans, whose yearly custom it was to greet the 
clergy at the close of the Mass of the Aurora. 

Soon the clatter of sword-scabbards was heard and the 
ringing of spurs, and Martin knew that the Count and his 
attendants were approaching. Bowing low with the rest as 
the royal party passed by, the boy did not raise his eyes to 
look at the Count or at any of his companions. The young 
cleric felt that sufficient honor had been paid him that day, 
and had no desire to attract his prince’s attention a second 
time. He rejoiced exceedingly when the Bishop led his 
noble visitor to an inner sacristy, and the signal to unrobe 
was at length given. For many reasons Martin longed to 
get away quickly from the minster. He had another Mass 
to assist at before noon, in the church of his own parish. 


72 


where for several years he had served at the altar. It was 
now long after nine in the morning, and as yet he was fast- 
ing; for though he had received Holy Communion at the 
Midnight Mass, he had not left the church until the time 
drew near for the royal procession to the cathedral. Again, 
the lad was anxious to avoid the curious questioning of the 
boys of the choir as to the reason of his sudden and unex- 
pected appearance in their midst. 

But Martin was not destined to leave the cathedral so 
quickly. He had scarcely put off his alb when one of the 
canons came behind. him and whispered, ‘‘The Bishop de- 
sires to see you; follow me!’’ 

A moment later the boy found himself in the presence of 
the Bishop of Tours and the Count of Mans. 

Scarcely in the whole of Christendom was there a hap- 
pier Christmas party than that held the same day in the poor 
little cottage belonging to Martin’s father, the poverty- 
stricken weaver of Tours. The Noel had brought them 
news indeed! Martin, for whom father and mother had 
made so many sacrifices and whose vocation tO' the priest- 
hood had long been to them a source of mingled anxiety 
and delight, was now a member of the great and rich cathe- 
dral establishment of Tours! No room now for fear lest 
they should be unable to supply their pious and loving little 
son with sufficient food and clothing ; no cause now for anxi- 
ety lest their pale-faced boy should be unable to continue his 
studies for the priesthood. Martin had obtained the patron- 
age of a Bishop and a prince ! 

In later years there was a Canon of Tours who is said 
to have taken the poor of the city into his own particular 
keeping. So great was his charity that the people declared 


73 


St. Martin himself had come to life again. But oh, the 
activity and generosity of this Canon Martin at the time 
of Christmas, and the sharp look-out he kept for poor shiv- 
ering little scholars I 


74 


A BELOVED PUPIL. 


I T was the noon of night, and the holy hermit of Culross 
was saying Matins. Not far from his solitary cell the 
waves broke upon the shore with their monotonous and 
soothing rhythm, and made a fitting accompaniment to St. 
Servan’s midnight praises. Solitary indeed was the hermit, 
solitary his abode; yet above the low chant of his Night 
Hours, above the booming of the wind around his hut, above 
the breaking of the waves upon the beach, the holy man 
heard voices. 

Not for one moment did he pause in the recitation of his 
psalms. Scarcely for an instant ceased these strange, sweet 
voices of the night. To one whose life is given over to the 
direct praise of his Creator, and to commerce with a great 
multitude of unseen and heavenly witnesses, it is not surpris- 
ing if, like Adam, he hears the voice of God when sounds 
of earth are stilled, or if there should reach his ears the 
chanting of the spirits of just men made perfect. To-night 
St. Servan did not doubt that he had caught an echo of the 
Lauds of the Angels. 

But as soon as he had finished his nocturns the hermit 
left his cell and passed out into the pale gray light of early 
dawn. Strange sounds still lingered in the air, and as the 


75 


hermit made his way to the seashore there came to his ear 
the wailing of a little child. Pressing quickly forward he 
saw a sight that filled him with pity and compassion. 

A girl lay on the sea-washed stones, clasping to her heart 
a newly-born child. To get help for babe and mother was 
the holy man’s first duty, and soon both were brought to a 
place of shelter. Terrible was the story the woman, little 
more than a girl, had to tell. Her name was Themin, and 
she was a princess, the daughter of Loth, King of the Piets. 
By her father’s orders she had been thrown from a steep 
rock at Mount Dunpeld. Poor sinner as she was, the good 
God had compassion on her. She was found lying unin- 
jured at the foot of the rock, and her father ordered her to 
be sent to the wild and desolate region of Culross. 

The holy man’s care for the child and his mother did not 
end with the providing of food and shelter and clothing. The 
girl was uninstructed and unbaptized. Bitterly she bewailed 
her sin, and when St. Servan was satisfied that she had be- 
come a true penitent he baptized her and her little one, giv- 
ing to her the name of Tanca, and to the boy that of Kenti- 
gern, or Kentiern, which means “chief lord.” 

Though Servan has been spoken of as a hermit, it is cer- 
tain that he became an Abbot, and that, as so frequently 
happened, his cell developed into a monastery. He was 
joined by other monks, and the Abbey of Culross became a 
place well-known for piety and learning. 

It is small wonder that little Kentigern should cling to the 
holy man who had not only saved his earthly life, but had 
been the means of his acquiring a right to the life eternal. 
Great was the love between the old man and the little child, 
and right gladly did the mother leave her son within the 


76 


sacred shelter of Culross. And the boy grew and became 
very dear to God. Gentle and affectionate, humble and 
obedient, was Mungho — the “dearly loved one,” as the Ab- 
bot always called him — and gave promise of becoming both 
learned and saintly. 

Wild indeed was the Scotland of the sixth century, wild 
and uncouth were its inhabitants; but the monks laboured 
hard to civilize the boys who were sent to them, and to bring 
them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. We may 
easily imagine what a hard time the gentle little Kentigern 
would have among a herd of half-savage lowland laddies. 
The well-known legends of the Saint that have come down to 
us doubtless had their origin in the lawless bullying of his 
schoolmates. 

In old times the striking of a light was often a lengthy 
and a difficult task, and in consequence of this fires were sel- 
dom allowed to die out. One of the duties of the lads at the 
abbey was that each in turn should rise in the night to throw 
more wood on the kitchen hearth, and to replenish the oil in 
the church lamps. On a night when it was Kentigern’s turn 
to fulfil this duty, some of the lads rose before him and care- 
fully extinguished the fire. But the Beloved one did not 
suffer. Miraculously, or otherwise, he obtained a light — to 
the confusion of the boys who wanted tO' get him punished. 

The well-known legend of the robin is more startling still. 
It was the Abbot’s pet bird, and lived in his cell. One day 
the young barbarians wrung the little redbreast’s neck and 
told the Abbot that his Mungho had done the deed. Greatly 
distressed, Kentigern took into his hands the body of the 
mangled bird, and raising his tearful, prayerful eyes to 
heaven, implored the Almighty to give back life to the Ab- 


77 


bot’s pet. Nothing is too small, nothing too great, for the 
good God to do when a saint prays as only a saint can pray, 
and Kentigern did not ask in vain. No wonder these coarse 
laddies became afraid to play tricks upon their saintly school- 
mate. 

While one author tells us that Kentigern ran away because 
he was unable to endure longer the envy of his fellow pupils, 
another assures us that he was sent to Glasgow by the 
Abbot St. Servan, in order to work for God. However this 
may be, we know that the day of his departure was the 
saddest of his life, and of that of his beloved master and 
spiritual father. One account says that the Abbot ran after 
him only to find that the boy had already crossed the 
river. 

“Alas! my dearest son,” cried St. Servan; “the light of 
my eyes, and the staf¥ of my age, wherefore hast thou de- 
serted me? Remember that I took thee from thy mother’s 
womb, nursed thee, and taught thee to this day. Do not 
desert my white hairs.” 

“My father,” called out Kentigern through his tears, “it 
is the will of the Most High that I should go.” 

“Come back, come back, my dearest!” cried the Abbot. 
“From being a father, I will be to thee a son : instead of being 
a master, I will become your disciple.” 

“My father, it cannot be,” answered the boy, sobbing very 
bitterly. “I must go where the Lord God calls me.” 

The love of a saint is as deep as it is true: but there is 
nothing of self in it. That which so many unhappy men and 
women call love of one another is often nothing but unblush- 
ing and undisguised selfishness. True affection makes no ac- 
count of self. The love that existed between these two holy 


souls was as deep as the ocean : each of them wished what 
was best for the other, not for what was most pleasing to 
himself. Bitter and terrible as the parting was, each at 
length understood that God willed it. 

So the Abbot raised his hands and sent his blessing across 
the river. Slowly and sorrowfully they parted, never again 
in this life to meet one another face to face. 

The subsequent adventures of St. Kentigern were many 
and remarkable. God had called him to be an apostle, and 
though like so many holy men and boys he began his aposto- 
late in a cave, people sought him out and listened to his 
teaching. He soon converted many to God, and even when 
he brought Kings into the fold of the Church, and found 
himself consecrated Bishop of Glasgow, he continued to live 
in a rocky cell with a stone for his pillow. From this primi- 
tive palace he went forth to preach, a wooden, unadorned 
pastoral stafif in one hand, an office book in the other, on 
foot through the country, passing from the Clyde to the 
Firth of Forth, living on bread and cheese and milk. 

Driven from his native country by a rebellion, St. Kenti- 
gern took refuge in Wales with the great St. David, remain- 
ing with him until the building of the famous monastery 
then called Llan-Elwy, and afterwards St. Asaph. Disciples 
and scholars flocked to this abbey in great numbers, and 
Kentigern remained here until after the death of St. David 
in 544, and until Roderick, the King of the North Britons, 
begged the Bishop of Glasgow to return to his see. So 
Kentigern left his abbey in the care of St. Asaph, and re- 
turned to the land of his birth, bringing with him a devoted 
band of British monks. 

Besides beginning the building of a cathedra! at Glasgow, 


79 


Kentigern labored to bring back to the faith the Piets of 
Galloway, and founded numerous missions and religious 
houses. His relations with the famous and holy Columba, 
Abbot of Iona, were of the most interesting kind, and there 
has come down to us a beautiful account of the meeting of 
these two Saints and their followers at Glasgow. 

St. Columba arrived with a great company of monks, and 
as they entered Glasgow the Abbot divided them into three 
big choirs. In the same way St. Kentigern met him with 
three great bodies of boys and monks and aged Fathers. 
First came the children of the choir, then the brethren who 
had reached manhood, and last of all the snowy-haired 
elders, among whom Kentigern took his place. 

“They shall sing in the ways of the Lord that great is the 
glory of the Lord : the path of the just is made, and the way 
of the saints is prepared” — chanted the choirs of Glasgow. 
Immediately they were answered by the monks of Iona : 
“The saints shall go from strength to strength, and unto the 
God of Gods appeareth every one of them in Sion.” 

Then the Apostle of the Piets affectionately embraced the 
Apostle of the Scots, and the two Saints spent several days 
together in sacred conference. 

St. Kentigern died in the year 6oi at the age of eighty- 
five. In life and after death he was famed for miracles. 
His feast is.kept on the 13th of January. 


As we write these lines, excavations are being made upon the site of ths 
ancient Abbey of Culross. A number of interesting objects have already 
been unearthed. One of the discoveries is a tomb which in the opinion of 
experts dates from the fourth century of the Christian era. It is probably 
the headstone of a chieftain and is in the form of a crucifix. A sword of 
very primitive design is incised upon it, and (says the Times of September 13, 
1905) original Culdee script and emblems which were engraved upon it 
have superimposed upon them the later symbols of the Roman Catholic 
Church, Other slabs of a similar nature are being unearthed. 


So 


The Legend of the Robin has been put into charming 
verse by Miss May Probyn : ’ 

God keep thee, little Kentigern, 

Sitting in the school ! 

Quickly the master will return^ — ■ 

Thou hast not broken the rule. 

From thy task thou hast not stirred, 

But the rest have slain the master’s bird — 

The little bird with the breast of red 
That perched on the master’s shoulder. 

And picked from his hand the crumbs of bread, 

Each morning waxing bolder — 

But the thoughtless lads as he flew by 
Have chased and caught him boisterously. 

They have snatched him from each other’s hold ; 

They have pulled off his head. 

Rent is the tuneful throat of gold — 

In twain he falleth dead. 

Drops of red on the white flags lie. 

And the step of the master draweth nigh. 

God keep thee, little Kentigern, 

Standing out on the floor! 

The coward lads, each in his turn. 

Have accused thee o’er and o’er. 

For sake of a little bird’s red blood 
Thou art to taste the master’s rod. 

8i 


The child hath asked that he may take 
In his hand the dead thing small. 

He joineth the head to the little neck — 
White-lipped the lads grow all. 

Lo, the bird hath preened its pretty wing, 
Glanced up, glanced down, and begun to sing. 


82 


A CHILD OF THE CAMP. 


T he camp life of the sixth century seemed scarcely fitted 
for the rearing of so delicate a boy as Dositheus the 
page. Happily for the child, his master acted the part of 
a true foster-father, ever regarding the lad’s welfare with 
careful solicitude. Dositheus had no knowledge of the 
Christian Religion, and the soldiers with whom he lived 
could teach him nothing. 

But the boy had the curiosity belonging to his tender age, 
and when in all the bravery of scarlet and gold he bore the 
cup and waited upon his master at the banquet, he listened 
eagerly, to the conversation of the guests as it turned upon 
foreign service and travels in the distant East. He was 
naturally intelligent, and his master liked to answer his ques- 
tions — liked the boy, who stood at his right hand and bore 
his cup, to show an interest in the talk of the table. 

A strange life certainly for this well-born lad, and in 
some respects a happy one ; for his master’s affection seems 
to have been of a true kind, and Dositheus had every reason 
to look up to him as a father and a friend. 

Now it happened on a certain day that the conversation 
at mess turned upon Jerusalem, and Dositheus marvelled 
much to hear it called the Holy City. His curiosity was ex- 
cited, and he wondered why this place of all others should 


83 


be regarded as sacred. Making no secret of his longing to 
see it he found to his great joy that not only was his mas- 
ter’s friend about to start for the East, but that he was going 
to visit Jerusalem. 

'‘And my Dositheus would like to journey thither — would 
he not ?” his master inquired, seeing the longing in his page’s 
face. 

"Yea, master, would I not love to go there!” the boy an- 
swered.. 

"Then, my son, you shall journey with the traveller as his 
page,” said the good-hearted officer. 

Now when the man and the boy had arrived at Jerusalem, 
one of the first places Dositheus visited was that Garden 
of Gethsemani wherein our Divine Lord suffered His bitter 
agony. And at that period there was set up in the holy 
place a terrible and a wonderful picture showing the tor- 
ments of hell, and the punishment of those souls who had 
made the sufferings of Jesus Christ of no effect. Not at all 
understanding the meaning of this awful painting the boy 
found himself unable to tear himself away from it. He 
appears to have been alone at this time, for a strange lady 
near him seeing his astonishment came up to him and began 
to explain the meaning of what he was gazing upon. 

"And is one obliged to go there?” he asked plaintively. 

"Nay, my child,” she answered, "the good God wishes 
none to go there. Only the wicked are found in hell, and 
those who will not let Jesus Christ save them.” 

Then came from Dositheus the question of questions — 
that cry of the heart which will be heard from all men to 
the end of time — "What shall I do to be saved ?” This was 
the beginning of the lad’s conversion — as it is of the turning 


84 


to God of SO' many. Fear of the unknown, fear of punish- 
ment, fear of hell : a blessed fear, even if its motive be an 
imperfect one, since it so often leads to that love which de- 
stroys all fear, saving the filial and reverential. 

Willingly and eagerly Dositheus listened to the lady's in- 
struction in the great truths of Religion; promptly and 
fervently he began to fast and to pray. It mattered noth- 
ing to him that his travelling companions laughed at him; 
but when they asked him if he was going to be a monk he 
had to ask ‘‘What is a monk?" He had never even heard 
of the monastic life; but when it was explained to him he 
lost no time in paying a visit to the nearest religious house, 
which was that governed by St. Serides. 

The Abbot Serides shook his head when Dositheus begged 
to be received forthwith into the community of Gaza. The 
holy man looked compassionately upon the boy in his rich 
dress, and could not but see that the young page was of a 
delicate constitution and that he had been accustomed to 
enjoy most of the luxuries of life. Everything seemed to 
be against the reception of the lad into so austere a com- 
munity : yet the earnestness and good-will of Dositheus were 
evident. Indeed, he would not be refused, and at length St. 
Serides handed him over to that wonderfully holy man,^ 

^ This Dorotheus informs us that in his childhood he had such an aversion 
to learning that he took up his book with a great repugnance as if it had been 
a serpent; but having overcome this obstacle by application, his passion for 
reading became so strong that the pleasure he found in reading made him often 
forget to eat, drink, and sleep. (Doctr. x.) At his meals he kept a book open 
by him, to cast his eye on it whilst he ate ; and he had one on his pillow in 
the night, in which he often read till midnight, and again so often as he 
waked. Having afterwards renounced the world, he became a disciple of 
John, the famous Monk of Palestine, who was surnamed the Prophet, and lived 
sometime in the monastery of the Abbot Serides, but afterwards governed a 
great monastery between Gaza and Majuma. He intermingles instructive 
examples with his precepts, and principally inculcates self-denial, humility, 
meekness, obedience, and assiduous prayer . — Alban Butler. 


85 


Dorotheiis the Archimandrite, who was at that time Master 
of Novices. 

Dorotheus soon saw that his new pupil in the Science of 
the Saints was much too delicate to practise the austerities 
which were common every-day matters at that time, so the 
saintly man began by correcting the lad's self-will, and by 
teaching him how to govern a somewhat unruly, and hitherto 
undisciplined, tongue. For it must be remembered that 
Dositheus w’as a very recent convert to the Catholic Faith, 
and that he had entered religion before he had had time 
to correct the faults of his past life, and to break himself of 
the many bad habits he had acquired by living among 
soldiers. 

Very gently and prudently did the Novice-Master begin to 
check the faults of his young charge. Unaccustomed to 
place any restraint upon himself in the matter of eating, 
and no doubt encouraged by his late indulgent master to 
enjoy the good things of the table, Dositheus was now taught 
how to practise a little mortification, 

*‘How much have you eaten to-day, my son?" inquired 
Dorotheus some time after the lad's admission to the mon- 
astery. 

“A loaf and a half. Father," the boy replied. This was 
five or six pounds weight of bread. 

‘That is pretty fair," said the good man with a smile; 
“suppose, my child, you take a trifle less than that to- 
morrow." 

Now the delightful thing about Dositheus was that he 
always obeyed, or tried to do so, and for this very reason 
everybody loved him. He took a little less on the morrow, 
and St. Dorotheus asked him how he felt in consequence. 


86 


“Quite well, my Father,'’ the boy said; and then the 
Novice-Master told him always to take what was necessary, 
but not more than that. After some time the lad found that 
half a pound of bread was quite sufficient for his needs. 

Soon after this, Dositheus was sent to wait upon the sick. 
He was such a bright, cheerful lad that those who were ill 
loved to have him about them, and thanked God for sending 
them a nurse so attentive and so merry. But saints are not 
made in a day, and sometimes the suffering are querulous 
and exacting. More than once Dositheus lost his temper 
and used language that had been familiar enough to^ soldiers 
but which was never heard in a community of monks. 

After these little falls the poor lad was very downhearted 
and repented bitterly. On one occasion he ran from the 
infirmary to his cell and throwing himself on the floor wept 
long and bitterly. Indeed he would not be comforted until 
St. Dorotheus came to him and assured him that when we 
are sorry for our sins God always forgives, and that it is 
not so much the falling into sin that we ought to fear as 
the remaining in it. 

In many little ways Dositheus was a trial to those with 
whom he lived, for among other things his camp life had 
made him somewhat noisy. One day the Novice-Master 
heard him shouting in the infirmary itself. 

“Brother,” said Dorotheus, “go and ask for a bottle of 
wine.” 

Dositheus ran to get the wine and soon returned with it 
to the Saint. 

“No, my son,” said Dorotheus as the lad presented him 
with the flask, “I don't want the wine. It is for you, your- 
self. The rollicking Goths, you know, shout and drink. I 


87 


heard you shouting and it seemed to me that all you needed 
in order to be a thorough Goth was a bottle of liquor.” 

It does not require much imagination to see the boy blush- 
ing for shame and begging his master’s pardon. The inci- 
dent describes only one of many similar attempts on the 
part of St. Dorotheus to train his young pupil in the way 
of sanctity. 

Sometimes the holy man thought it good to put on a 
harshness of look and manner which was not natural to him, 
for there were moments when the lad seemed to need a cer- 
tain severity of treatment. 

Like all boys, and most men, Dositheus now and then gave 
way to boasting. 

‘Took here. Father!” he called one day to his master, 
who had just entered the infirmary, “just see how beauti- 
fully I have made these beds!” 

“Ah, yes,” replied the Saint; “you are certainly a good 
bed-maker. But I don’t think much of you as a monk. A 
real monk doesn’t boast.” 

There was still a good deal of the child left in Dositheus, 
in spite of his efforts to lead a life of perfection, and, one 
may say, in spite of his many successes. One day the stew- 
ard of the monastery gave him a knife. Quite inordinately 
pleased with it he showed it to St. Dorotheus. “Let me look 
at it,” said the Saint, taking it into his hand to examine it. 
“It’s just the very thing for cutting up my bread, isn’t it. 
Father?” the boy asked. “Are you very much delighted 
with this knife?” the old man questioned. “I should just 
think so, Father,” Dositheus replied. “Then, my child, I 
think you had better give it away. Let some other monk 
have it ; don’t you touch it again.” Without the least demur 


the boy obeyed, and doubtless St. Dorotheas rejoiced in his 
heart to see the progress his disciple had made in the hard- 
est of all the virtues. 

Virtue is not virtue until it is tried, and trifling as these 
little mortifications may seem, they were true tests of obedi- 
ence and the sacrifice of self-will. Dositheus was too deli- 
cate to flog himself much with whip-cord, or to go about 
with irons upon his limbs, or even perhaps to wear hair-cloth. 
He was not strong enough to watch all night in prayer, or 
to keep the rigorous fasts of his Order. But he asked and 
obtained strength to do something much harder and much 
better — -something to which these austerities are after all 
only a help. He could obey. He could run counter to his 
own will. He could give up things for the love of God. 
He could receive a rebuke without resenting it. These are 
the things that help to make the Saint. 

But he had to be proved, and his Novice-Master was in- 
genious in putting the lad’s virtue to the test. ‘T shall send 
Brother Dositheus to you to-day,” said St. Dorotheas to the 
Abbot Serides; ‘‘please pretend to be cross with him and 
send him away roughly. I want to see how far he has ad- 
vanced.” Now at that time the young novice was studying 
the Holy Scriptures and was wont to go to his master with 
any passage that he could not understand. “I can’t attend 
to you,” exclaimed Dorotheas when the boy came to his cell, 
book in hand; “go to the Abbot.” So Dositheus went to 
the Abbot quite humbly and begged him to explain the words 
of a difficult passage. “Get away with you,” said the Ab- 
bot boxing his ears ; “do you think I have nothing to do but 
teach an ignorant fellow like you?” It was anything but 
a light trial to which he was subjected, for it seemed to the 


89 


boy that both these holy men had been angry with him for 
merely doing his duty. However, he went back to his own 
cell without showing any sign of resentment, and quite de- 
termined not to let the remembrance of this seemingly un- 
kind treatment rankle in his mind. And, says the chroni- 
cler of this story, no sooner had he reached his cell than the 
good God gave him light to penetrate and understand the 
portion of Holy Scripture that he was reading. 

Five years passed away, and Dositheus was a young man. 
His progress in things spiritual had been great, but he had 
not outgrown that delicacy of constitution which was so 
apparent in his boyhood. He began to spit blood and to 
show alarming signs of consumption. Somebody told him 
that a diet of raw eggs would stop the hemorrhage, but he 
begged his Superior not to allow him to try this remedy ; for 
at first the idea of this cure had pleased him greatly, and 
above all things he wished to make a sacrifice of his own will. 
Seeing him so earnest in desiring the prohibition, and prob- 
ably knowing that the young man would not be much bene- 
fited by taking the eggs, St. Dorotheus said: “Very well, 
my son ; but you shall make trial of every other possible 
remedy.” 

But the disease gained upon him, and it soon became evi- 
dent that God was calling him out of life. “Be constant 
in prayer, my child,” said Dorotheus, as the youth grew 
worse; “do not let go of prayer.” Dositheus replied that all 
was well with him, and begged for his master’s prayers. But 
when he had grown very weak and the old man asked him 
if he could still pray, he replied : “Pardon me, my Father, 
I find it very hard to pray.” “Do not be afraid, my son,” 


90 


said the old monk, ‘"and do not force yourself to formal 
prayer. Only have our Lord Jesus present in your heart.” 

A few days afterwards Dositheus turned to Dorotheus 
and said : ‘‘My Father, I can bear no more.” Then replied 
the Saint, “Go in peace, my child, and stand in the presence 
of the Most Blessed Trinity. And pray for us.” 

St. Dorotheus must have marvelled at the obtuseness of 
some of the monks who could not understand why he had 
spoken to Dositheus as if he were a saint. “Father,” said 
they, “you promised him Paradise; yet he did not fast, he 
did not mortify his body, and we never heard of any miracles 
that he performed.” Nothing is more disheartening to a 
teacher than to perceive that some of his lessons have been 
misunderstood, and some of his very first principles miscon- 
ceived. Dorotheus could have retorted very sharply upon 
these good but somewhat wooden men; however he only 
reminded them that if Dositheus had not fasted, or practised 
austerities, he had done something much more difficult — 
something that is a better test of sanctity than is the working 
of miracles : he had given up his own will. 

Soon after the young Saint’s death, it chanced that an 
old monk in the infirmary was praying that God would 
show him all the holy men of that house who had already 
entered into Paradise. His prayer was heard, and he saw a 
vast choir of white-haired monks, and conspicuous among 
them one young lay-brother, with the dark abundant hair 
of youth, and a hectic flush upon his cheeks. When he told 
his vision to some who had so foolishly doubted the sanctity 
of their departed brother they said, “Without a doubt our 
Dositheus has entered Heaven !” 


91 


A MINSTREL’S MINISTRY. 


E ven when he was a young boy in St. Cadoc’s delightful 
school at Llancarvan, Hyvarnion had been known as 
the Little Sage. To no small number of our British fore- 
fathers God gave the gift of song — not merely the inferior 
capacity of playing and singing, but that immeasurably 
higher endowment of creation and invention. 

Like his holy master Cadoc and many others of that 
period, Hyvarnion was a poet as well as a minstrel, a sage 
as well as a singer. And because his teachers and school- 
mates willingly gave him the distinguishing title of Ystwd- 
vech, i. e., the Little Bard, there can be no doubt that at 
quite an early age he began to show very remarkable pow- 
ers of thought. 

Genuine lover of poetry and of music was Cadoc, and his 
regard for this gifted pupil was marked. No doubt the 
Abbot hoped that like so many other well-endowed boys 
Hyvarnion would one day submit his curly locks to the 
Church’s shears and be crowned with the tonsure of the 
monk. For the lad was humble and modest, pious and 
obedient, and seemed to be blessed with all the qualities that 
the Saint required in those who offered themselves as his 
subjects. Indeed, full of admiration for the young bard’s 
wisdom and power of improvisation, St. Cadoc one day ven- 


92 


tured to engage with him in a sort of contest of song on the 
subject of the moral virtues. 

It was an interesting and a moving spectacle. There in 
the big cloister-school, in the presence of all the monks and 
the boys, harp in hand, the vsaintly Abbot confronted the 
little school-lad and enumerating the eighteen leading virtues 
with which a true follower of Jesus Christ ought to be 
adorned, bade Hyvarnion complete the list. 

For one so young it was no light task to try and add to the 
eloquent and exhaustive speech of the saintly and learned 
Abbot; nevertheless as soon as his master had finished the 
little minstrel struck his own harp and began to sing: 

Ever the highest is he who is strongest when he is tried ; 

He is the virtuous man who is patient in bearing his cross; 

He "who is quick to act yet modest when he succeeds. 

He who is humble of heart and persists in the way that is straight, 
Ready to labour and strive, heedless of all that affrights, 

Ever longing for learning, generous to the untaught, 

Kind in thought and in speech, a doer of beautiful deeds, 

A maker of peace in strife, pure in body and mind. 

To strangers courteous, mild, affable ever at board, 

Just in his daily speech, just in his hourly deed, 

Strict to observe the law of the Body of Christ, the Church, 

Pitiful to the poor and to all who suffer wrong. 

The boy ceased and bowing his head knelt at his master’s 
feet. 

“Nay,” said Cadoc with tears in his eyes, “be not fearful, 
my child. Verily thine is the prize. In this contest, Hyvar- 
nion, I freely acknowledge thee the victor.” 

“Not so, my master,” said the lad, raising his eyes for a 
moment to the Abbot’s face. “I tried to surpass thee, I, an 
ignorant young boy. Thine, holy Father, is the victory, for 
in awarding me the prize thou art but making proof of the 
possession of true humility.” 


93 


No person present ever forgot one detail of that striking 
scene. It seemed to the monks that saint was striving with 
saint. A great shout rang through the hall, hearty British 
and Irish cheers both for their comrade and for the Abbot. 

Even when the assembly broke up and the young bard’s 
schoolfellow’s flocked about him to offer their congratula- 
tions, Hyvarnion would not accept the victory. 

‘‘ ’Tis the Abbot’s own teaching,” he said modestly. ‘^What 
should I know of the virtues but for him? And is he not 
a living example of all that I put in my song? Nay, but I 
did but sing in my own feeble language the great truths 
that we have all learnt sitting at his feet. Who of us can 
ever forget the verses he has taken such pains to teach us ? 
Let us repeat some of them as we walk,” added Hyvarnion 
as the crowd left the cloister and sauntered into the open. 

And on their way to the playing-field now one and now 
another of the lads, led by Hyvarnion, chanted in a lusty 
reble the following aphorisms : 

“Truth is the elder daughter of God.” 

“Without light nothing is good.” 

“Without light there is no piety.” 

“Without light there is no religion.” 

“Without light there is no faith.” 

“The sight of God, that is light” 


II. 

We may imagine with what reluctance the Abbot parted 
from his little Sage. But the day came when Hyvarnion 
had to confess that he felt no call to the life of a monk. 
Anxious as he was to serve God faithfully he could not 
bind himself by the vows of religion. 


94 


And just because Cadoc was a genuine saint he was no 
narrow and rigid priest. Dearly as he would have liked to 
retain this gifted and good-living lad, the Abbot thought it 
the most natural thing in the world that his pupil should 
desire to see men and cities and to make some trial of the 
talents God had bestowed upon him. Even when the holy 
man reflected upon the nature of these talents and remem- 
bered how easily they might be put to perilous uses, he did 
not overlook the fact that God does not ask one man to play 
Providence over another. 

Like all truly good and wise men, he had a horror of 
trying to force a vocation, and well understood, that to 
one not called of God, the life of the cloister might prove 
more dangerous than the life of a Court. 

Moreover, he knew Hyvarnion. Young as the boy was 
he had acquired very solid virtues. The Abbey was no for- 
cing-house, no hot-bed of piety, but a Christian school in 
which lads were taught to live holily, so that whatever the 
circumstances of their after-life might be they should prove 
themselves strong in the hour of trial. A hardy, manly, 
prayerful life was that of the sixth century schoolboy, cal- 
culated to make the weak character strong, and the strong 
character heroic. 

At this period Saxon England offered no scope, no fitting 
career for a boy like Hyvarnion. Very slowly indeed was 
it being converted to the Catholic faith ; almost imperceptibly 
was it changing its barbarian habits. But now that Childe- 
bert had become the King of the Franks there was something 
akin to civilization in Gaul, and, doubtless after much cogi- 
tation and many prayers, to Paris would Cadoc send the 
young genius who was so dear to him. 


95 


It is probable that at this time the boy was about four- 
teen, and that he spent at least four years at the Court of 
Childebert. His office was a high one and an honourable. 
No mere buffoon was this British lad whose voice could 
make rough men weep, and the sound of whose harp strings 
could bring gladness to the saddest of hearts. No court 
jester was the pupil of the Abbot of Llancarvan, but a poet 
who sang of themes both high and holy, and who among 
the mixed crowd of courtiers exercised a ministry of song 
calculated to make men ashamed of their vices, and to give 
them some understanding of the exceeding beauty of holi- 
ness. 

Great and to some extent perilous for this young Briton 
was the change from the hard fare and stern discipline of 
the cloister .school to the freedom and luxury of a royal 
palace. Happily the teaching of his holy master and the 
virtuous habits formed in his childhood stood him in good 
stead. St. Cadoc’s words had sunk deep down into the 
young minstrel’s heart. Gaul too had its saints at this 
period, and the pure-hearted boy knew by happy experience 
how lovingly helpful holy men could be. 

But a day came when Hyvarnion felt a mighty longing 
to revisit the land of his birth. With a great desire he pined 
to see once again his beloved master and the beauty and 
peacefulness of Llancarvan. He had grown into a tall and 
handsome youth, strong and sturdy, and no longer could 
he sing in the dulcet treble of his boyhood. 

So with the King’s permission Hyvarnion left the Court 
and travelled from Paris to Brittany, where he felt sure 
of getting a boat that would sooner or later land him on 
the shores of Britain. 


96 


But there was some delay in getting the necessary craft, 
and the young man became the guest of Kon-mor, Childe- 
bert’s vicegerent in Brittany: an honored guest, too, and 
one for whom fitting entertainment must be provided. So 
there were hunting-parties, and the killing of wild boar and 
deer; and it was during one of these hunts there befell the 
minstrel an adventure that changed the whole course of 
his career. 

Riding one day through the forest, he, who so greatly 
appreciated the magic of musical sounds, found himself in- 
tently listening to the singing of the most beautiful treble 
voice he had ever heard. Checking his horse he remained 
motionless for a space, drinking in every note of this en- 
chanting vocal music. It was the voice of a country maiden, 
and as the young man listened his heart grew soft and ten- 
der. Pushing his way through the green boughs and the 
undergrowth he soon found himself standing in a sunny 
glade by the maiden’s side. And this was the refrain of 
her song: 

There by the water flowing 
Close to the streamlet’s side, 

Like the blue iris growing — 

Yet one shall call me his bride. 

Truly, thought the young man, I am now of an age when 
the honest wooing of a bride might be blessed by God and 
by His Church. Modestly and respectfully he greeted her. 

'Tell me what flowers thou gatherest?” he began to say, 
blushing more deeply than did the startled damsel herself. 
"But how white and fair thou art! and how sweetly thou 
singest I” 

"These are herbs, young sir,” she replied in a low voice. 


97 


‘They are simples and not flowers. One drives away sad- 
ness ; another banishes blindness. It is said there is one that 
overcomes death.” 

Verily, thought the minstrel, this maiden is as wise as 
she is beautiful, and, if I mistake not, wise with the wisdom 
of Heaven. 

“Little queen,” he said to her, “will you not give me of 
your simples ?” 

“Nay, sir,” she quickly replied, “I will give them to no 
man — saving to him who shall be my spouse.” 

“But will you not permit me to be your spouse?” asked 
Hyvarnion with great simplicity. And even as she hesi- 
tated and turned away the young man's host, missing him 
from the hunt, rode hastily into the glade. 

“Oh, Kon-mor!” exclaimed the youth, “here is the only 
maiden I ever loved. Will you not help me to persuade her 
to be my own true wife.” 

But Rivanon, the lady of the simples and of the song, 
already loved the handsome and richly-clad man who treated 
her with such reverence and courtesy. 

So Childebert’s viceroy rode ’home and gave orders for a 
magnificent wedding banquet, and very soon Hyvarnion and 
Rivanon were made man and wife. And so happy were 
they that Cadoc’s pupil forgot his own country and his 
father's house, and exchanged the Britain of his birth for 
the Brittany of his adoption. 

After three years of blissful living a new joy came to 
them in the birth of a son. But the joy was tinged with sor- 
row, for alas ! the boy was blind. Yet his father and mother 
loved him all the more tenderly for this affliction, and as he 
lay wailing in his little crib each in turn would speak to him 


and soothe him with song. Night and day they sang to him 
and alwa3^s would he cease to weep and try to show how 
much he delighted in sweet sounds. They had called him 
Herve, which signifies bitterness, but in the love and care 
of their child they both found a surpassing sweetness. 


III. 

When Herve was two years old his mother experienced 
the greatest sorrow of her life. Hyvarnion, her devoted 
and beloved husband, Hyvarnion, the strong and handsome 
minstrel, was seized with a fatal sickness and soon passed 
out of life. Her grief was very great, and her condition 
became exceedingly pitiful. She had no parents living and 
no well-to-do friends. Rejoicing in his young manhood and 
in his strength, and always successful in earning by his music 
everything that he needed, Hyvarnion had made no pro- 
vision for the wife and child he loved so tenderly. 

The little blind boy now became his mother’s only earthly 
consolation. He grew up with that extraordinary love of 
all things holy vrhich in some children is a special endow- 
ment of Heaven. From both father and mother he inherited 
the gift of poetry and music, as well as great personal beauty 
of form and feature. Before he was seven years old his one 
anxiety was to comfort and help his mother; when he 
reached that truly tender age he at once began to try and 
earn his living. 

For fourteen hundred years have the Bretons sung the 
praises of little Herve. He is the hero of many of their 
prettiest and most pathetic ballads — still chanted round Bre- 
ton farm-house firesides on winter nights, still recited be- 


l. OF C. 


99 


neath shady trees on summer days. In one of these songs 
they describe the golden-haired, sightless little bard of seven 
led about by a white dog, standing shivering in the wind and 
rain and snow with no sabots on his bare feet and scarce 
able to raise his voice in song for the trembling of his poor 
little limbs and the chattering of his teeth. 

They also sing a certain “Song of Souls” composed by 
Herve at his father’s grave on the evening of the feast of 
All Saints; they tell too how on returning home, cold and 
weary, his feet slipped and he fell on the wet soil, and with 
a wounded and bleeding mouth sought the protecting arms 
of his mother. 

It was when Herve reached the age of fourteen that a 
great change took place in his daily life and in that of his 
mother. 

Loving her as he did and earning whatever money he 
could for her support and for his own, he must have guessed 
that her heart was now wholly weaned from the things of 
this world, and that now and again she turned longing eyes 
towards a certain cloister home where many holy women 
were living under a religious rule. 

Yet knowing too how dear he was to that widowed mother 
he felt sure that unless he told her of his own yearnings to 
devote himself more directly to God’s service she would 
never dream of taking a step that would separate her from 
him for all time. 

So one day he spoke to her very tenderly and lovingly, 
reminding her of the strange wandering life he had led since 
he was a little child of seven, and telling her how much he 
longed to go to- some solitary place where he could sing 


100 


the praises of God and hear no music but that of the offices 
of the Church. 

She listened to him in silence and with fast-falling tears. 
For though his own desires were so perfectly in union with 
her own the thought of being separated from her afflicted 
darling was almost more than she could bear. Yet when 
she raised her eyes to look upon him, noticing the enthusiasm 
with which he spoke, seeing also how fair and handsome 
he was growing and how tall, she told herself that for his 
own sake it would be well that he should have some pro- 
tector stronger than herself. For rapidly as the Catholic 
religion was spreading in Brittany there were many pagans 
and barbarians in the neighborhood — heathen bards, too, who 
would certainly bear no good-will towards a Christian min- 
strel who in all his songs sang of his fair Master, Christ 
and of the sweet Mother who gave Him birth. 

Long and earnestly did Herve and his widowed mother 
talk of their prospects, and of her brother Gorfoed who long 
ago had retired into a solitary place in a neighbouring forest, 
where he lived the life of a hermit. She indeed would be 
well content, she said, if her son placed himself in the care 
of so holy a man and so near a relation. A person of some 
learnkig too was Gorfoed, and in spite of the fact that he 
had sought out a very retired place and had nothing but a 
little cell to live in, all the boys of the neighborhood regularly 
flocked to him for instruction. 

It is indeed a remarkable fact that the Bretons and the 
Irish were so keen after letters that no matter how remote 
the dwelling of a learned man might be they were always 
quick to discover him and eager to profit by his teaching. 
As we have already seen, when St. Cadoc and St. Gildas 


lOI 


took up their abode on a desert island, the boys of Brittany 
soon found them out, and though the lads had to cross the 
sea in their corricles they thought nothing of the trouble 
and the peril of these daily joumeyings if only they might 
acquire some tincture of divine and human wisdom. 


IV. 

Herve must have started for his uncle’s solitude long be- 
fore the break of day, for, led by his faithful white dog, he 
arrived just as the morning sun was pouring a pool of light 
over the open space in front of the hermit’s cell. The door 
was shut, but the boy knocked and the dog barked. Rising 
from his morning prayer the solitary threw open the door. 

But for the presence of the dog, Gorfoed would have mis- 
taken his nephew for one of God’s ministering spirits. 
Standing there in the full light of the morning sun, his 
beautiful features surrounded by a halo of golden hair, and 
wearing that calm, rapt expression so often seen on the faces 
of the blind, Herve looked more like a radiant angel than 
a minstrel boy. 

‘‘Angel or mortal, I bless thee !” exclaimed the hermit. “A 
thousand times welcome art thou to my poor cell.” # 

And now for some happy peaceful years the poor lad’s 
wanderings were over. Already his mother was clothed 
with the habit of religion, and right gladly did he offer his 
entire being to the good God she had taught him to love 
and to serve. 

Day by day he joined in all the prayers and offices of his 
guardian. Day by day he sat beside the sturdy Breton lads 
who crowded to the hermitage and shared their every les- 


102 


son. Very soon, and in spite of his blindness, Herve sur- 
passed every pupil in learning. From his beloved mother he 
had already learned much, and, as we know, he had those 
gifts of creation and improvisation for which his minstrel 
father, the whilom pupil of St. Cadoc, had been distin- 
guished. Marvellous grew the lad’s memory, and though 
his eyes had never looked upon the written letter his mind 
became stored with every kind of knowledge. 

Day by day the little hermitage rang with the music of 
harp and voice. With reverent admiration did Gorfoed’s 
pupils listen to the blind boy’s impassioned minstrelsy. Al- 
most with awe would they make a circle about him under 
the trees of the woodland, and wait with rapt attention for 
the inspired music that so quickly rose to his lips. To have 
the privilege of leading him, to carry his harp, or to offer 
him any kind of service, these young Bretons were ready to 
fight one another. They brought him their ripest fruits and 
their sweetest-smelling flowers. The pick of the autumn 
berries and the choicest of hazel nuts and filberts were poured 
into Herve’s lap. 

When winter came they brought him the whitest and 
warmest lambskin that they could procure — tunic and cloak 
of the fairest and thickest. Content themselves with suits 
of goatskin, and bands of undressed leather wrapped about 
their sturdy legs they besought their mothers to make for 
Herve long stockings of leather, thick, supple and lined with 
soft white lambswool. Utterly indifferent to the shape or 
fit of the wooden shoes they made for themselves, they vied 
with one another in turning out for Herve sabots of superior 
cut, of the lightest wood the forest afforded, and carved as 
to their insteps with quaint designs. 


103 


Thus did they pay their school fees to the hermit, for he 
would receive no money from them, and for himself nothing 
but the plainest food and the coarsest garments. But he was 
glad that the poor, afflicted, yet thrice-blessed lad who had 
come to him should be warmed and filled and in every way 
well nourished. For Herve’s earlier life had been a period 
of great privation, and the wonder was that so delicate a 
child should have survived those long years of penury and 
exposure, the time from seven to fourteen when the child 
sought so hard and not always successfully, to earn enough 
bread for his mother and for himself. 


V. 

The happy years of pupilage rolled on and Herve reached 
his twenty-first birthday. That the youth should have a 
strong desire to visit his mother seemed to the hermit-uncle 
the most natural thing in the world. In fact Gorfoed him- 
self set out with his nephew to find the convent where his 
sister had taken the veil. 

It proved to be a sad, yet a happy and fortunate, visit. 
Herve was only just in time to receive his mother’s blessing 
and to add to the exceeding blissfulness of her last mo- 
ments. 

And now another great change was to come about in 
the life of the blind minstrel. His uncle was no longer 
young and for some time past had longed to lead a more 
retired and recollected life. 

‘Though, my son, you are deprived of bodily sight,” said 
Gorfoed to his nephew as they journeyed home, “your mind 
is unusually enlightened, and your soul is flooded with the 


104 


light that comes down from the Father of Lights. Why 
should you not take up the work that after so many years 
of labour I must now lay down? You surpass me both in 
learning and in holiness. The lads love you and reverence 
you, and your influence upon them for good is enormous.. 
They will look after your every want; all that you need 
they will most willingly bring to you.” 

“If it be God’s will and yours, my uncle,” said Herve 
simply, “I am well content ; though it grieves me to the heart 
to lose you who for seven long years have been my father 
and my master.” 

So after a long and affectionate leave-taking the hermit 
passed away and sought a deeper solitude in which he hoped 
to prepare himself for that marvellous unending life of 
Eternity upon which all his hopes were fixed. 

Generously and resolutely, in spite of the double loss that 
wounded a specially sensitive heart, Herve set himself to 
the task of teaching. Well-equipped he certainly was, and 
in possession of all the gifts that a Christian schoolmaster 
requires. Boys of every age and condition crowded to the 
hermitage school, leaving it every evening, as an old Breton 
ballad puts it, “as noisily as a swarm of bees emerging from 
a hollow tree.” 

Right glad was the master when the days of sunshine 
came and he could lead his troop of scholars into the open. 
There in the midst of them would he sit, his sightless but 
perfectly formed eyes raised to the sky, and give them the 
benefit of all the learning with which his mind was filled. 
Lesson succeeded lesson, music followed arithmetic, the 
Holy Scriptures came after Virgil, religious maxims in 
verse, many of them resembling those aphorisms the great 


105 


St. Cadoc had taught Herve’s father, were chanted to the 
strains of the harp: 

“ Better instruct a child than collect riches*^ 

“ The idle boy is laying up misery for his old age." 

“ Who will not obey the rudder will have to obey the reef." 

Such were the maxims that he taught. But above all he 
was anxious to give these rough lads a rule of Christian 
life, and for this end he composed a special poem which they 
learnt by heart and sang to a pleasing melody. 

In this song they are instructed to offer their hearts and 
lives to God the very moment they awake from sleep. “Make 
the sign of the Cross and say: *My God, I give Thee my 
heart, my body and my soul. Make me grow up a good 
man, or let me die in my youth.’ ” 

The same poem teaches them how through the sights and 
sounds of Nature they may raise their minds to higher 
things. 

“When you see a crow fly, think of the black and evil devil 
who is ever ready to destroy you. When you see a wood- 
pigeon circling in the air, think of your own guardian-angel, 
gentle and white and sweet. When you behold the sun in 
the heavens, think of the God who sees all things, who, like 
the sun, gives warmth and light to the whole world and 
makes the wild roses grow upon the blue mountains and the 
perfumed violets in the green forests. Ever before sleep 
commend yourself to God, that a white angel may come 
from Heaven and watch over you through all the hours 
of darkness on to the golden dawn.” 

Herve’s great anxiety was to help his young scholars to 
pray regularly and well. Without some training in fixed 
habits of prayer and recollection, he knew that religious 

io6 


teaching was of little worth, and that without constant cor- 
respondence with Heaven no theological virtue could last- 
ingly flourish. So he taught his boys how to exercise faith 
and hope and love and sorrow for sin, and to look upon . 
direct communication with the good God as one of lifers 
greatest privileges. 

Is it any wonder that in this province of Brittany the 
Catholic Faith took deep and lasting root? 


VI. 

As time went on Herve’s pupils grew into men, and many 
of them became holy priests and monks. What he had 
taught them when they were boys they were now ready 
and able to teach others. Indeed as the years rolled by he 
began to see that he was no longer necessary to the exist- 
ence of the hermitage-school, and that it might be well if he 
left it in the hands of a quondam pupil and opened a place 
of learning in some more neglected district. When a little 
girl suddenly appeared on the scene and claimed his protec- 
tion as the daughter of his mother’s sister, Herve bade a 
sorrowful adieu to his weeping scholars and began to travel 
eastward. 

Herve saw the hand of Providence in the arrival of the 
homeless little Kristina. When his faithful white dog died 
he had not provided himself with another animal friend, and 
indeed there was no need to do this when so many boys 
struggled for the privilege of leading him from place to 
place. Now that he was leaving the hermitage for ever 
this bright and intelligent little child would act as his guide 
and assistant. 


107 


To build a small religious house was his first purpose, a 
little monastery in which he would teach the young, and 
in whose neighborhood he could find a suitable lodging for 
his niece. Moreover, like the Saxon Aldhelm, he was a 
great believer in the ministry of song, and knew that he 
could teach Catholic doctrine very effectively by going about 
among the people harp in hand and with Christian ballads 
upon his lips. He could not well be a preacher, for he 
had not even minor orders; a teacher, and a highly suc- 
cessful one, he had already shown himself to be. 

Little as Herve wished to find himself at the head of a re- 
ligious community he could not refuse the help of those who 
wished to join him in his good work, and when in addition 
to the house and chapel that they soon managed to build 
they set to work to construct a little cottage of wattled 
broom for Kristina, the good minstrel was glad at heart. 
Under a clump of willows beside a pool, and beneath the 
shadow of the church stood the little maiden’s beehive home, 
and there she lived in great content, having sole charge of 
the altar-linen and of all the decorations of that little house 
of God. 

Even she is commemorated in the ancient Breton ballads, 
one of which speaks of her flitting in and out of her little 
hive of a home, singing and humming like a busy bee, pick- 
ing the choicest flowers she could find and arranging them 
for the adornment of the altar. So sweet and sacred were 
the hymns she sang that while working within the church 
she did not refrain from chanting, and often when he heard 
her voice Herve would make his way into the porch in order 
to listen and to bless God for the maiden’s piety and inno- 
cence. 


to8 


After some years so great became Herve’s fame for wis- 
dom and for sanctity that when a council of Breton Bishops 
met at Run-brea to condemn and to excommunicate an officer 
who was treating the poor with great harshness and injus- 
tice, our hermit-minstrel was not only invited to be present 
but was asked to pronounce the sentence. 

The scene was a striking one. Barefoot and clad in goat- 
skin the hermit stood in the centre of seven Bishops and 
many abbots, each holding a lighted torch. The wrongs done 
by the oppressor were many and great, and all the prelates 
were agreed that the Church’s ban should be put upon him. 
So mounting a rock the blind minstrel solemnly recited the 
sentence and the seven Bishops responded with a triple 
Amen. Every torch was instantly extinguished, and the 
Council broke up in silence. 

For many happy years Herve continued to teach and to 
sing both at home and abroad, continuing to share his her- 
mitage-monastery with a number of devoted brethren. And 
still the holy maiden Kristina continued to live in the little 
hive-like hut that stood so close to the door of the church. 
But as the years passed by and Herv^e began to grow old and 
feeble she could no longer lead him abroad. Nor might she 
visit him in the hermitage. Yet on sunny days he would 
come to the entrance of the church to give the maiden his 
blessing, and to encourage her in the solitary and holy life 
she had so willingly adopted. 

One day the hermit-minstrel dragged himself thither for 
the last time. 

“Kristina,"’ he began feebly, “make up a little bed for 
me before the altar of God. Make it on the hard earth at 
the feet of Jesus crucified. Give me a stone for bolster 


109 


and strew the couch with ashes, for the time of my passing 
is nigh.’’ 

With much weeping the maiden obeyed him. Then she 
knelt beside him imploring him as a last favor to beg of God 
that she might follow him, **as the boat follows the ship.” 

^‘My child, God is the master,” was his reply. “It is He 
who sows the grain and reaps it when it is ripe.” 

For three days he lay before the altar, and on the third, 
surrounded by Bishop and abbots and priests, his holy soul 
passed to its rest. 

And at the same moment Kristina bowed herself upon the 
feet of her uncle and died. The boat had followed the ship 
into the Haven of Eternity. 


no 


A MIGHTY STRUGGLE. 


MONO the truly great men of the past, Augustine of 



Hippo holds high place. The man who worships 
mere intellect cannot but venerate Augustine: the worldly 
man cannot but be interested in one who for many years was 
the prince of worldlings. True penitents regard him as 
their patron : sinners who are yet tied and bound with the 
chain of sin will, if they are wise, ask for his intercession. 

In the year 354 Augustine was born of a pagan father and 
a Christian mother. His parents were fairly well-to-do but 
by no means rich, and the father was not slow to see that 
his boy was possessed of quite exceptional abilities. He first 
went to school in his native town of Tagaste, not far from 
Hippo in the African province of Numidia: afterwards he 
studied grammar, poetry, and rhetoric at Madaura. The 
father’s one ambition was that Augustine should be a great 
scholar : the mother’s daily prayer was that her son should 
become a great saint. 

At the age of sixteen the boy returned to his home, his 
father wishing him to finish his studies at Carthage. But to 
the grief of Monica and the lasting detriment of the lad, his 
father allowed him to spend a whole year in idleness. The 
reading of bad plays first corrupted his mind ; the frequent- 
ing of theatres and an excessive indulgence in field sports 
brought him into bad company and led him into every sort 
of sin. 


Ill 


In his seventeenth year Augustine went to Carthage. It 
is a proof of his ardent nature, as well as of his amazing 
ability, that he threw himself into his studies with such appli- 
cation that he soon held the foremost place in the most 
famous schools of his country. Yet his vices seemed to 
grow with his learning. Instead of checking the immoral 
course upon which he had entered, his studies increased his 
opportunities and occasions of sinning. 

Meanwhile, his holy mother, Monica, prayed. She her- 
self had instructed her boy in the Catholic faith. He was 
not yet baptized, but he was a catechumen. She had taught 
him to pray. As was the custom at that particular time, his 
baptism had been put off, lest the grace of it should be 
abused. A year after he had been sent to Carthage, his 
father died after being received into the Church. The 
widowed Monica still prayed. 

Of a certain character in a distinguished work of fiction 
the author says: “His soul was like some great cathedral 
organ foully handled in the night by demons.” The com- 
parison may well be applied to Augustine. His intellect was 
colossal. Even non-Catholic authors claim him as one of 
the greatest writers who ever lived. Great as an orator 
and a rhetorician, he was still greater as a thinker. His 
reasoning power was immense. No knowledge came amiss 
to him. He took up and absorbed almost every form of 
science. 

But if his intellect was strong and powerful, so were his 
passions. In that amazing book of his Confessions he has 
shown us something of the strife that went on within his soul 
for so many long years : we know that the battle was Titanic. 
Good and evil fought desperately for the lasting possession 


II2 


of that great mind. He was by nature generous and re- 
fined. Even in his vices he observed a certain external 
decency, and his manners were irreproachable. Intensely 
proud as at this time he was, he carefully refrained from the 
abusive language in which his companions indulged, and the 
practical joking so common among the Carthaginian stu- 
dents. To give pain to others afforded him no pleasure. 
None the less, he lived in open sin and in almost complete 
forgetfulness of God. But Monica still prayed. 

Restless and ill at ease in spite of his scholastic successes, 
he determined to devote himself to the study of philosophy. 
He began to have a certain contempt for honors and riches. 
Learning and wisdom should give him the satisfaction that 
sensual pleasure could not supply. Yet he made little or no 
change in his life. The habit of mortal sin was still upon 
him. Philosophy could show him how to reason concern- 
ing his passions : it could not help him to overcome them. 

As his knowledge increased, his pride also increased. To 
his many mortal sins he was to add that of heresy. Hitherto 
he had been a Christian in name, retaining a certain rever- 
ence for Christ and remaining mindful of the teaching of 
his saintly mother. But long-continued habits of sensuality 
had blinded his spiritual understanding and greatly weakened 
his will. To the intense grief of Monica, he joined the sect 
of the Manichees, remaining in it from his nineteenth to his 
twenty-eighth year. It was a monstrous and ridiculous 
heresy, that of Manicheism, and the fall of so great a genius 
into so foolish and deadly an error was the direct outcome 
of his pride and impurity. He fell as Solomon fell, as Luther 
fell, as Henry VIII. fell, as almost every heresiarch has 
fallen. 


A great sorrow fell upon Augustine. His dearest friend 
and one who had followed him into heresy fell sick and was 
received back into the Catholic Church. He rallied for 
a time and Augustine ridiculed his friend’s conversion.' “If 
you wish to remain my friend,” said the sick man, “you 
must not make fun of my religion.” Soon afterwards he 
died very happily, and Augustine’s grief was terrible. He 
could do nothing but weep and his life became insupportable. 
Philosophy could give him no relief : knowledge had no cure 
for a loss of this kind. Sensual pleasures became a torment. 
He could no longer remain at Tagaste, where for some 
years he had conducted a school of grammar and rhetoric, 
and determined to remove to* the great capital of Carthage. 
Here he gained distinction and applause in public disputa- 
tions, and secured the principal prizes for oratory and poetry. 
Time and new friends mitigated his grief. 

Soon however the disorderly conduct of the students dis- 
gusted him, and he determined to go to Rome. There he 
fell dangerously ill. Recovering, he began tO' lecture, the 
most famous scholars of the day frequenting his schools. 
Still restless, and annoyed at the knavery of some of his 
pupils who cheated him of his fees, he sought and obtained 
a royal appointment, that of Professor of Rhetoric at Milan. 

Though St. Monica did not know it, this was the moment 
for which she had prayed. This was the begimiing of the 
end of Augustine’s apostacy and immorality. 

To be in the city of Milan without hearing of the holiness 
and eloquence of its Bishop was impossible. Out of mere 
curiosity, and to indulge his love of rhetoric, Augustine went 
to hear St. Ambrose preach. Almost insensibly, Monica’s 
son was impressed. He went to criticize, he remained to 


think. The manner of the holy Bishop’s sermons attracted 
the great Rhetorician: the matter of them sank into his 
heart. Here was a man of God who could reason : the most 
famous among the Manichees could only talk. Augustine 
was deeply moved, but he was not yet converted. Yet 
Monica still prayed. 

“The enemy held my will,” Augustine afterwards wrote, 
“and of it he made a chain with which he had fettered me 
fast. From a perverse will was created wicked desire or 
lust, and the serving this lust produced a kind of necessity, 
with which as with certain links fastened one to another I 
was kept close shackled in this cruel slavery.” 

If the forming of bad friendships is always a sure occasion 
of sin, as it certainly is, the making friends with really good 
people is a special antidote to vice. Augustine began to put 
himself in the way of holy men, as formerly he had sought 
out the wicked. Not even then was his conversion imme- 
diately assured, but he had taken the first grand step in the 
right direction. And all this time Monica was praying. 

From good friends to good books is an easy step. As a 
young boy, bad books had seduced Augustine ; corrupt plays 
had led him into wicked company. He now began to read 
the sublime Epistles of St. Paul and the Lives of the Saints. 
These writings powerfully affected him, but the struggle still 
went on. Hell was enraged at the idea of losing a soul so 
powerful for good or harm, a soul that had served it so 
faithfully for so many long years. “I was enraged at 
myself,” he says, “that I did not courageously and at once 
resolve on what my reason convinced me was the good and 
necessary thing to be done. ... I shook my chain . . . 
but could not be released from it.” 


But he continued to seek out holy men; he went on 
reading good books. He had already abandoned the Mani- 
chean heresy, and his mother had followed him to Milan; 
for tenderly and devotedly as she loved him, while he re- 
mained a heretic she would not live in his house. But she 
never ceased to pray for him. 

Who shall describe her happiness, or his, when the day 
of his deliverance came ? It came in the year 386 when he 
was thirty-two years old. In great retirement, mother and 
son lived together, giving themselves to prayer and the 
practise of a holy life. On the following Easter Eve, Au- 
gustine was baptized by St. Ambrose, and in November of 
the same year St. Monica died. Augustine became a priest 
and subsequently a Bishop: he remains one of the greatest 
of God’s saints. He died on the 28th of August, 430, in 
his seventy-seventh year. 


ST. BERNARD AND THE KNIGHTS. 


A LENTEN STORY. 

I. 

Gloom of a rigorous Lent, 

And the time of the Passion nigh : 
Gay knights on pleasure bent 
Passing Clairvaux by, 

Riding to tournament. 

II. 

Nightfall in a lonely waste : 

Shall they pause at the abbey gate, 

Or gallop ahead in haste 

Hoping for better fate 
Than of fasting fare to taste? 

III. 

Did their angels lead them in? 

Well, an angel met them there, 

And from buttery and bin 

Brought forth — not monkish fare — 
A bait, their souls to win. 


117 


IV. 


‘‘I ask of you a truce/’ 

The holy Bernard cried; 

‘‘Do not the Lent abuse, 

And the day your Saviour died 
But each had his excuse. 


V. 

“A truce till Lent is o’er? 

Nay, for the lists are spread I” 
“Then shall I pray the more,” 
(The holy Abbot said, 

Pausing the wine to pour, 


VI. 

Pausing to bless the bowls) : 

“I have begged of God a boon ; 

Now drink to the health of your souls! 

May He grant my favor soon 
Whose power the world controls !” 


VII. 

Anon they rode away. 

But the wine had failed to cheer ; 
The gayest of the gay 

Were filled with dread and fear. 
The dullest with dismay. 

ii8 


vm. 


Each scanned his fellow’s face: 

Lo, each was traced with tears ; 
Riding at funeral pace 
They told their faults and fears— 
First movement of sweet grace. 


IX. 

‘‘The Abbot o’er his wine 
Hath cast a secret charm; 
It is a Spell divine!” — 

(The leader, in alarm, 

To halt had made the sig;n.) 


X. 

Turning, they spur — they fly 
Back to the abbey gate ; 
’Lighting they kneel and cry, 
“Say not we come too late! 
Here would we live — ^and diel” 


119 


LOVERS OF LEARNING. 

HEN that learned Irish monk Tathai settled at Gwent 



Y Y ini Monmouthshire, he had twelve pupils, and one 
cow. And, excepting his books, he had very little else, so 
that the milk of that one cow formed a very important item 
in the daily fare of the Doctor and his scholars. 

In the Wales of the Sixth Century there were many petty 
kings, and Gundliew, Prince of Brenockshire, was one of 
them — a turbulent person who with the help of three hun- 
dred of his vassals had stolen the beautiful daughter of a 
neighboring king and made her his bride. It is to be feared 
that he stole almost everything that took his fancy; but 
when his men carried off the poor monk’s one cow its lawful 
owner immediately started to remonstrate with the robber- 
chief. 

Tathai was in bed when the robbers came, but directly 
he heard of his loss he set out for the castle of King Gund- 
liew, arriving there in an important and, as it turned out, 
an auspicious hour. That very night a son had been born 
to the king — who seems to have had some knowledge of, 
even if he did not practise, the Catholic religion. At any 
rate he not only restored the stolen cow, but begged the good 
monk to baptize the newly-born child. Tathai did this very 
joyfully, giving the babe the name of Cadoc; what is more, 
he promised that when the boy was old enough he would 
take charge of his education and up-bringing. 


120 


So when little Cadoc (in Celtic the name means Warlike) 
was seven years old he was sent to the monk’s school, in- 
forming his master that he had already been taught to hunt 
and fight. The monk was not a professor either of fighting 
or of hunting, but he at once began to teach the little prince 
the grammar of Priscian and Donatus. Many other useful 
and important things did the Irish Doctor teach his pupil. 
Cadoc not only learnt his Psalter but began to use it. Prayer 
soon became to him a regular habit and his attachment to 
his holy master grew deep. 

Prince as he was, he showed himself the very willing and 
affectionate servant of his tutor, lighting the fire, cooking 
the dinner and serving at table. All these things he did 
for twelve long years, developing as time went on such a 
love of study that the monk began to hope Cadoc might 
some day wear the tonsure instead of his father’s crown. 

Tathai’s hopes were realized. When Cadoc reached the 
age of nineteen he gladly accepted his tutor’s suggestion of a 
course of higher studies at the famous Irish monastic school 
at Lismore. After remaining there for some time he re- 
turned to Wales in order to join a renowned British rhetori- 
cian lately come from Rome, a professor who taught the 
humanities after the best Roman method. 

Unfortunately this learned Doctor was very poor and so 
many scholars flocked to him that very soon something like 
famine made itself felt. It seems probable that the learned 
monk had taken possession of a deserted farm-house, for one 
day when Cadoc was sitting studying in his cell and trying 
to forget how very hungry he was, a mouse jumped on the 
little table and dropped thereon a grain of corn. It is quite 
possible, as the old chronicler says, that Cadoc did not see 


I2I 


either mouse or grain, but when it returned with a second 
and a third and continued until seven grains lay before the 
young student’s eyes, he began to reason about the matter. 
At such a time even one small sack of wheat would be most 
acceptable, and if only he could follow the mouse he might 
at least discover some little forgotten or unheard-of store. 

The supply may have been miraculous — it is probable that 
Cadoc and his master thought it was so — but at any rate 
when they began to search the cellars, to their lasting joy 
and thankfulness they found an enormous heap of corn — ^a 
supply not only sufficient for their own wants but for those 
of the poor of the neighborhood. 

Though he was heir to his father’s kingdom, Cadoc had 
not the smallest intention of becoming King. Having fin- 
ished his studies he began to lead the life of a solitary, with 
the resolution of building a monastery and opening a school. 
As he was an only son he knew that sooner or later he would 
inherit considerable property. His design was to build a big 
abbey and open up a great seat of learning and of sanctity. 

At that time Wales was filled with forest-land: the wild 
boar and the wolf were everywhere. From his infancy 
Cadoc had hunted both, so that while he was looking for a 
suitable building site the appearance of an enormous boar, 
white with age, did not scare him. Indeed he was inter- 
ested in the leaps of the big shaggy creature as it made 
three bounds one after the other, turning each time to glare 
at the intruder. Cadoc took up three fallen branches and 
carefully marked the three spaces cleared by the boar. ‘‘Here 
I will build my church,” he said to himself, ‘‘here shall be 
the dormitories, and here the refectory.” 


122 


In course of time the great Abbey of Llancarvan became a 
reality. This Ecclesia Cervontm, or Church of the Stags, 
was so named because, says the legend, two stags offered 
themselves to replace two weary monks who found the work 
of dragging timber too laborious. 

Llancarvan grew into a magnificent centre of usefulness. 
The labor of clearing the forest and of building the monas- 
tery was enormous; yet directly the monks had finished their 
domicile they set to work ploughing the land and sowing it 
with corn. More important still, the abbey developed into 
a great religious and literary school. First and foremost 
among its duties were the study of the Bible and the writing 
out of its various books. Transcription of Latin authors 
and their commentators followed this, for Cadoc was a 
scholar of the best type and, like the poet of a later age, next 
to Divine Wisdom he loved his Virgil. Like Dante, too, he 
was a poet. 

A renowned professor of that day was St. Gildas, well 
known in Ireland,^ where he had both studied and lectured, 
and also at that great seat of learning, Glastonbury. To the 
monks of this famous abbey he taught the seven liberal 
arts so successfully that all his pupils became masters. 

For one whole year did Gildas the Wise lecture at Llan- 
carvan, desiring no payment but the prayers of his pupils. 
Moreover, during the same period he copied out the entire 
book of the Gospels for the use of the abbey whose welcome 
guest he long remained. 

‘‘With the monk came the monastery,’' says a Protestant 

^ He had taught for years at the great cathedral school of Armagh, 
founded by St. Patrick, an establishment that might fitly have been called 
a university. Boys were sent here from every part of Europe, and by the 
ninth century it toasted 7,000 students. For centuries Ireland was known as 
the Land of Saints and Scholars. 


123 


writer, “with the monastery came the school, and to the 
gentler spirit a new home was Open, a new and noble voca- 
tion offered. . . . The sixth century saw schools estab- 

lished in Britain, and the first fruits of learning in the ap- 
pearance of a native author, the monk Gildas, surnamed the 
Wise.’’ 

Pupils from all parts flocked to Llancarvan, many of them 
being the sons of kings and chieftains. Like that of every 
true artist and teacher, Cadoc’s motto was docere cum delec- 
tatione, to make instruction pleasant as well as profitable. 
Years afterwards his pupils remembered and quoted the little 
verses and poetical aphorisms they had learnt in the cloister 
school at Llancarvan. One good prince of North Wales 
loved to repeat two sentences taught him by Cadoc : 

Remember that thou art a man: There is no King 

LIKE HIM WHO IS KiNG OF HIMSELF. 

We may imagine how many prayers and what severe pen- 
ances Cadoc offered for the conversion of his father and 
mother. Fierce and rapacious as the King was it is clear 
that he had a certain respect for the Christian religion. The 
man who begged for baptism for his son and who gladly 
permitted him to be brought up and educated by a holy monk 
was no deliberate hater of righteousness. 

But when a man who is dear to God begins to importune 
Heaven we are never surprised at the result. Cadoc was 
not content with prayer and penance. To his father’s house 
he sent a holy embassy of three monks who after taking 
counsel of the lords of the country began to preach repent- 
ance in the King’s presence. From the first, Cadoc’s mother 
was deeply touched. The preaching of the monks and the 


124 


pleading of the Queen soon had the desired effect. ‘‘Our son 
shall now become our father,” she said to her husband. 

With great joy did Cadoc receive and obey the summons 
to visit his father and mother. Nothing would content the 
King and Queen but a public confession of their sins. “Let 
all my race obey Cadoc with true piety,” was Gundliew’s 
decree. No wonder they chanted together the psalm, Ex- 
audiat fe Dominus in die trihulationis. 

The sincerity and thoroughness of their conversions can- 
not be doubted. Husband and wife both retired from Court 
and took up their abode in two little cabins at a short dis- 
tance from each other. There they lived in great peace and 
content, working with their hands and subsisting on barley 
bread and cresses. Their saintly son paid them frequent 
visits, giving them the best of spiritual help and instruction 
and becoming to them a deeply-venerated spiritual father. 
As time went on the King and Queen became more and 
more in love with solitude and with holy things, each of 
them seeking a deeper retirement and a more complete union 
with God. 

When the day came upon which Gundliew died in the 
arms of his saintly son, the latter found himself very rich. 
Cadoc could not rid himself of his inheritance. He could 
and did use it for the good of the people who now regarded 
him as their King. For them a Golden Age had indeed 
begun. At once abbot and prince, Cadoc proved himself 
the father and protector of the poor, the courageous and de- 
termined defender of his people’s rights and liberties. Men 
always knew when they entered the territory of Cadoc, so 
deep was its peace, so actual its prosperity. Happy indeed 
were the poor who lived under Cadoc’s crook — a sceptre 


125 


at once more gentle and more powerful than that held by 
any mere secular potentate. The truest of true knights was 
this holy abbot, ever careful to right wrongs, to defend the 
honour of women, and to protect the patrimony of the poor. 
Yet it seems probable that he never had recourse to arms, 
though he maintained at his own cost a hundred knights and 
a hundred servants. Besides these he supported a hundred 
priests, and gave education to all the numerous children sent 
to him. 

Fierce were the times and constant the harry ings of rob- 
ber-chieftains, of tyrant kings and their followers. Harp in 
hand and at the head of fifty monks chanting psalms, Cadoc 
would go out to meet, and to overcome, a band of marauders. 
His courage was unbounded, and what these poor pagans 
atributed to magic was of course nothing but the exercise 
of that fearless moral force that he, in common with so many 
holy men, possessed. 

Like a mighty deluge came the Saxon invasion. Its hor- 
rors and profanations reached even to the banks of the 
Severn and of the Usk, and the peaceful domains of Cadoc 
became the theatre of bloodshed and war. As others of his 
countrymen had done, Cadoc fled to Brittany, taking with 
him Gildas. They could not be idle. Though content enough 
to lead the life of solitaries, choosing indeed a cave in the 
little desert island of Ronech, disciples from the mainland 
sought them out and compelled them to dispense both hu- 
man and divine knowledge. Day after day came the boys 
and young men of Brittany in their poor little boats to sit 
at the feet of Cadoc and Gildas. Won by their eagerness 
to learn and delighted with the progress they made, Cadoc 
actually set to work to construct a sort of bridge from his 


126 


island to the coast of France. He had brought with him 
his Virgil as well as the Sacred Scriptures, and from these 
two books Cadoc and Gildas taught their pupils. 

Where the wild waves lapped the shores of their little 
island home, walked Cadoc and Gildas. Boisterously blew 
the wind as friend talked with friend, as one Saint held con- 
verse with another. Knowledge was theirs in common ; but 
the bond that bound them together in closest friendship was 
their love of God and the souls for whom He died. 

Close tucked beneath the arm of St. Cadoc was a precious 
parchment copy of his favorite poet — Virgil. Precious in- 
deed was that hand-written book ; for from it Cadoc not only 
taught the Brittany children — boys who in shallow boats 
daily left the mainland for Cadoc’s island-school — ^but his 
affection for it was great, and, with a modern writer, he 
would have said : ‘'Every Christian loves to walk with Vir- 
gil as long as he can, and he will only leave him if he be 
obliged to leave him at the last extremity, and with tears 
in his eyes.’’ 

On this windy morning there were tears in the eyes of St. 
Cadoc, tears that were not forthdrawn by the buffeting sea- 
breeze, or left upon his furrowed cheeks by the spray of the 
ocean. 

“So much I love him,” the Scholar-Saint was saying to 
his scholar-companion, “yet even at this very moment he 
may perchance be enduring the torments of the damned.” 

But Gildas, holy man as he was, for a moment forgot him- 
self. 

“There can be no perchance in Virgil’s case,” he retorted. 
“How comes it, Cadoc, that you can dare to doubt as to 
the damnation of this pagan poet ?” 


127 


Then curious and startling was the thing that happened ! 
Whether for a moment Cadoc relaxed his hold upon the 
precious volume, or whether a sudden and violent gust of 
wind snatched the book from his embrace — who shall say? 
But even as Gildas spoke, away flew the parchment into the 
air, only to be swallowed up in the billows of a wind-tossed 
sea! 

Was Cadoc to regard the occurrence as a confirmation of 
Gildas's judgment — the judgment that seemed to be, and 
was, so harsh? To the owner of the book it appeared to 
be so. His sorrow had been great before: he was now 
plunged into a very agony of grief. 

Leaving his friend, Cadoc returned to his cell. Long and 
earnest was his prayer; firm was his resolution that, until 
he could feel assured of the fate of one “who sang on earth 
as the angels sing in Heaven,'^ he would not eat a mouthful 
of bread nor drink one drop of water. 

The tender-hearted Scholar-Saint fell asleep in his cell, 
and in his sleep he dreamed a Heaven-sent dream. A figure 
stood by his side, and a gentle voice sounded in his ear. 

“Fmy for me, pray for me,” said the soft, far-away voice; 
‘^pray for me, Cadoc! never he zveary of praying for me; I 
shall yet sing eternally the mercy of the Lord” 

Cadoc had fallen asleep in deepest grief : he awoke joyful 
and glad. He rejoiced that the good God had heard his 
prayer : He was filled with happiness when he reflected that 
henceforward the soul of the poet that he loved would be 
helped by his daily supplications. For his view of Virgil 
was that of many another holy man, and with a nineteenth 
century poet he would have said : 


128 


Not for the glittering splendor of the verse, 

O Seer-singer, do "we count thee dear ; 

Not for the prowess of the ^nean spear. 

The long brave battling with the Dardan ctirse ; 

But for thy human heart’s sake we rehearse 
Thy deep lines eloquent with hope and fear. 

Great was the fame of Cadoc in after-years, and many the 
legends of him handed down by his peasant scholars. And 
on winter nights about the fire when they told the story of 
Cadoc’s book and how the wild wind snatched it from his 
hold and carried it out to the sea they knew so well, they 
never forgot the story’s sequel. For, said they, on the 
following morning the fishermen who reverenced him and 
loved to offer him the first-fruits of their toil, brought to 
his cell a noble salmon. In due time the fish was opened; 
within it was found the treasured copy of Virgil, lost but the 
day before! 

This, at any rate, is how they told the story, and this is 
what they believed. What is quite certain is that the huge 
salmon and the recovered Virgil came out of the same sea, 
and it is more than possible that they were both secured by 
the same fisherman. 

Though Cadoc was never again to dwell in his own peace- 
ful domain of Llancarvan, after spending some years upon 
the little island of Ronech he returned to his native land. 
Much as he dreaded the barbarian Saxons he thought it his 
duty to live among them if only to comfort and help the 
victims of their invasion. 

And at Weedon in Northamptonshire, while he was en- 
gaged in singing Mass a Saxon spear pierced his heart and 
at the very altar itself he died a blessed martyr. 


129 


FROM FOLD TO FOLD. 


I N the happy far-off times of which we write, high-born 
boys did not disdain ta keep their father’s sheep. Sel- 
dom was the son of the noble unwilling to act as shepherd- 
lad. The heir to a great estate, sometimes indeed the son of 
a king, would be met leading his father’s flocks to pasture or 
guarding them from the ravages of wolves and bears. 

A sturdy, hardy life it was, making for health and beauty 
and personal bravery; making often enough for learning 
and piety and for a true estimate of the value of things tem- 
poral and eternal. For at that time people were not com- 
pelled to consider the cause and cure of a something that 
in these days is called “Civilization.” The extravagances 
and barbarities, the luxuries and artificialities of our days 
were happily unknown to men who lived lives that were at 
once simple and noble, and who died deaths that were not 
unfrequently blissful and saintly. 

If an army of writers devoted their time to the study 
and the relation of all the benefits bestowed upon the world 
by the monastic orders, and particularly that of St.. Bene- 
dict, they would not be able to put on record more than a 
scanty history of all the known good these holy monks 
effected. Yet in comparison with the unknown how small 
is the known ! Only the angels of God could write the full 
and complete history of any Christian nation. 

Happily, that which we know is so abundant and leads us 
130 


into such a labyrinth of golden deeds that we have little need 
to speculate upon the value of the unrecorded works and ' 
words, prayers and penances of holy men of old. 

Valery was the son of a gentleman of Auvergne. In a 
strangely varied district he kept his father’s sheep — a region 
of old volcanic caves and exhausted craters now filled with 
water and forming big circular pools. Yet could Valery 
lift his eyes to the blue hills and venture into the deep soli- 
tude of vast pine forests, finding abundant pasture for his 
sheep, and learning little by little to love the lonely shepherd 
life that brought him, as it were, face to face with the 
Creator. 

Like many a lad of his own time, and of later times, he 
soon began to experience great longings for — he knew not 
what. The heart of the boy became restless. Big desires 
possessed him — desires of knowing and of loving the Author 
of all the grandeur that daily greeted his sight. Above all 
things he desired a knowledge of letters, since this would 
open out to him all the beauty of the Book of Nature and 
the Book of the Gospels. 

Now and then when he was going home to his father’s 
house after a day’s shepherding he would meet boys of his 
acquaintance returning from the monastery school. Scarcely 
could he conceal his envy as he reflected that some of these 
young nobles and peasants were not older than himself ; yet 
easily could they read the written word and recite the whole 
of that grand primer of ancient times, the^first serious task 
every little schoolboy applied himself to, the glorious book of 
a hundred and fifty poems, many of them written by a king 
who had once been a shepherd-boy. 


But Valery was still very young, and it may be that his 
father thought there would be ample time for study in the 
near future. Then the fresh open-air life was so good 
for the child, already grown ruddy and strong and sturdy. 
Yet in the course of a day’s shepherding there were always 
some unoccupied hours, and Valery’s father made no objec- 
tion to his son carrying a tablet and style and, since he 
already knew his alphabet, trying to teach himself how 
to read and write. 

So quite alone and unaided Valery began to trace his let- 
ters on the waxen tablet. As his sheep browsed peacefully 
on the mountain-side Valery made syllables of letters and 
words of syllables. Not content with learning to read and 
write the boy now began to study the Latin grammar. One 
thing he greatly desired and that was to be able to read, and 
reading to learn by heart, the hymns of the Shepherd-King. 

The multiplication of books has meant — certainly the dif- 
fusion of knowledge, but also — the weakening of memory. 
That a child should learn by heart the entire Psalter, and ac- 
quire it not merely as a lesson by heart sooner or later to be 
forgotten, but in order to say and to sing every syllable of 
it correctly, seems to us something of a feat; yet for hun- 
dreds of years the task was looked upon as a very elementary 
one and as much a matter of course as the learning of an 
alphabet. Moreover, in some cases it was done with com- 
parative quickness. The little boy Lananus, whose good 
mother brought him to St. Patrick — ^who asked St. Cassan 
to take charge of and to instruct him — learned the whole of 
David’s Psalms in a fortnight. Adalbert of Prague learned 
his Psalter before he was sent to school. 

How long this task may have occupied Valery the shep- 


132 


herd-boy of Auvergne we do not know ; but it is certain that 
as soon as he could read, and while he kept his sheep, he 
committed to memory the entire collection of the sacred 
songs that begin with Beatus vir and end with Laudate Dom- 
intim in sanctis. 

What a precious possession, for either man or boy ! Val- 
ery's delight and thankfulness knew no bounds. Wherever 
he went he could build himself a spiritual temple. Every 
tree became to him a choir-stall; the mountain-side served 
him for an oratory ; the deep valley was his minster. Going 
out from home or returning at night-fall he could chant and 
sing. In the heat of noontide he could lift heart and voice 
to God. Whatever his mood might be this wonderful Psalter 
supplied him with the words he needed. 

Valery was happier than a regiment of Kings. The 
dearest desire of his heart had been satisfied. The Church’s 
big book of prayers was his — more really and more inti- 
mately than if he owned the beautifully written Psalter lent 
to him by the Abbot of St. Antony’s. Prayer was now no 
difficulty to the boy. In one psalm or another the deepest 
sentiments of his heart could always find expression. They 
were his very own, these canticles of praise and of petition, 
these hymns of joy and of sorrow, these songs of hope and 
of love. 

Is it any wonder if as one day he chanted the words, 
Blessed is he zvhom Thou hast chosen and taken to Thee: 
He shall dzvell in Thy courts — is it any wonder if he began 
to think longingly of the Abbey of St. Antony where his 
uncle was a monk — chosen and taken by God to dwell in 
His courts? Valery was still young, and to his father and 
mother he was exceedingly dear. For years, perhaps, they 


133 


had noticed the bent of his mind, and had seen that his affec- 
tions were set upon things both high and holy. To lose him 
was terrible, but they did not oppose his wish to be a monk. 
And, after all, he was too sweet and gentle, too modest and 
loving to find happiness in a wild lawless world, or satisfac- 
tion in an inheritance of flocks and herds. 

So on a day that was filled to overflowing with strangely- 
mingled joy and sorrow, Valery passed into the silent life 
of hard study and manual labor and deep prayer. As yet 
he did not go far from home — the Auvergne that was now, 
and always would be, dear to him. Besides, as we have 
said, his own uncle was at St. Antony's, and it was the most 
natural thing in the world that Valery should begin his 
religious, apprenticeship among the monks he had so long 
regarded with affectionate respect. 

Here at any rate he spent the time of his noviceship and 
the years of his early boyhood, giving promise of both learn- 
ing and goodness. But in a year or two he went on to the 
monastery of St. Aunacharius at Auxerre. 

However, the France of those times was full of the report 
of the wonderful doings of St. Columbanus, and the big 
abbey of Luxeuil was attracting to its schools students from 
every land. The fame of the great Irish Abbot reached 
the ears of Valery and he began to long to number himself 
among the monks at Luxeuil. 

Staff in hand, and with one companion named Bobbo, 
Valery left Auxerre and after a toilsome pilgrimage reached 
that wonderful land of pine forest and blue mountains which 
reminded him strongly of his own beloved Auvergne. 

The novices of Luxeuil had a garden that was all their 
own, and of this the holy Abbot Columbanus made Valery 


134 


the keeper. If the monks had succeeded in nothing but the 
teaching* of the great lesson of the dignity of labour they 
would have justified their existence; in reality they taught 
their pupils everything that it is good for boy or man to 
know. Valery had come to this far-famed monastery pri- 
marily to pray and to study: he had also come to work 
with his hands. And how well he tended his enclosed gar- 
den is a matter of history. 

So hard did he labour with spade and fork that almost as 
if by miracle insects and worms, stones and weeds, seemed 
to be foreign to his garden. To vegetables and to flowers 
he gave equal care. Not by bread alone do men live, but 
by every word that is found in God’s big book of nature, 
as well as in that precious legacy of His written word. 
Brother Valery loved everything that God had made, and 
so assiduously did he cultivate sweet-smelling herbs and 
every kind of perfumed blossom, that what the poet has re- 
corded of Arthur’s young knight Pelleas is literally true of 
V alery : 

. . . . the high doors 

Were softly sunder’d, and thro’ these a youth, 

Pelleas, and the sweet smell of the fields 
Past, and the sunshine came along with him. 

For when one day Valery entered the great chapter-hall 
where the Abbot was about to explain the Sacred Scriptures, 
the odour of fragrant flowers passed in with him, and before 
all the assembled monks Columbanus cried out to the gar- 
dener-Brother, “It is thou, my well-beloved, who art the 
true abbot and lord of this monastery.” 

In kitchen and refectory alike the vegetables from the 
novices’ garden were in high repute. Ever wholesome and 
sweet-flavoured, said the Brother Cook, were the cabbages 


135 


and beans grown by Valery ; ever pleasant to sight and taste, 
said the hard-faring monks, were the fruits of the earth that 
seemed to be endowed with a particular benediction through 
the prayerful toil of Valery. 

Happy were the years spent under the saintly rule of 
Columbanus, so happy, indeed, and with such practise of 
solid virtue on the part of the two hundred and twenty 
monks, that the devil became enraged with envy and began 
to look about him for some means to destroy the blissful- 
ness of such holy living. In the person of a woman Satan 
found a ready tool. Queen Brunehault smote the holy 
shepherd and, scattering the entire flock, gave the abbey to 
seculars. Happily the havoc wrought by this she-wolf, as 
she was called, and her infamous grandson, the King of 
Burgundy, was ultimately repaired. 

In this work of reparation Valery was prominent. Join- 
ing himself to a saintly Father named Eustace he began to 
collect the scattered brethren ; soon they had the joy of tak- 
ing possession of the fold that was so dear to them, though 
they never succeeded in recalling their holy Abbot. 

Content as Valery was to live in monastic peace, the 
heathenish state of some parts of France caused him and 
a brother named Waldelin much grief, and soon with the 
consent of the Bishop of Amiens and King Clothair III, the 
two monks started on a missionary expedition to Leuconay 
near the mouth of the Somme. Here they built for them- 
selves a small hermitage and some cells. Little by little 
other zealous men joined them, and much encouraged by 
their Bishop, who always came to them for the whole of 
Lent, a flourishing monastery was established. Its good in- 
fluence was soon felt throughout the entire district, and what 


136 


had been one of the fastnesses of Satan now became an 
earthly Paradise. 

Here Valery was to live and to die, honoured and loved 
as much by his flock as by his own religious brethren. Feared 
too, as well as loved ; for it was firmly believed that he could 
read the thoughts of the heart. Had he not openly rebuked 
a man who had come to receive Holy Communion after 
drinking a measure of wine? When Father Valery’s eyes 
rested upon the boy who brought loaves and some wine 
his mother had sent as an offering to the monastery 
church, did he not tremble as Father Valery said, “My child, 
you have eaten of the bread offered to God, have you not? 
On your way hither did you not drink a quantity of the 
wine ?” 

When Valery broke the pagan images and pulled down 
little heathen shrines, angry as some of the yet unconverted 
showed themselves, they dared not lay hand upon the holy 
man or upon his little acolyte. 

Yet the fowls of the air had no fear of Valery’s keen 
and flashing eye. The wild birds not only came and fed 
from his hand, but would stand on it and permit him to 
stroke their feathers. So well they recognized him and 
so much they sought him that they would fly into the re- 
fectory, well knowing that they would never be driven forth 
and that no serving monk would harm them. Yet the mas- 
ter-passion of his heart was a great love for the poor and 
the afflicted, and a sentence constantly upon his lips was: 
“The more cheerfully we give to those who are in distress, 
the more readily will God give us what we ask of Him.” 

Rose-red grew the face of the holy old man as he wan- 
dered about the hills of his last resting-place on earth — rose- 


137 


red with the fire of the love of God which was ever newly 
kindled when he looked upon and admired the works of the 
Creator. Long had he read and pondered upon the ever 
Open pages of the book of Nature. As a little shepherd-lad 
on the hills of Auvergne he had looked upon the blue moun- 
tains and the shining pools set like mirrors in the great 
stretches of green pasture, and he had found them very 
good. Long before he could read the written letters upon 
the borrowed Psalter^ — nay before he knew the meaning of 
the symbols that make up the alphabet, he had gazed upon- 
created beauty with the eye of a Christian poet, and it had 
led his soul to dwell with ever-increasing fondness upon the 
Uncreated Beauty of the Divinity. 

One Saturday he walked out with a company of his 
monks, and as they climbed a little hill that he had always 
loved and frequented he paused at the foot of a certain tree 
and said to his brethren very sweetly: ‘‘My children, re- 
member that here is the spot I have chosen for my burial.’' 

And on the following day, the 12th of December, 622, 
the Lord’s own day of rejoicing, the holy man fell asleep 
and passed into his everlasting rest. 

Like so many other holy monks he gave his name to 
the town of which his abbey was the beginning. St. Valery- 
sur-Somme was one of the most prosperous ports of the 
Channel during the middle ages. Both Hugh Capet and 
William the Conqueror had a great regard for the memory 
of St. Valery. 


138 


FROBERT THE SIMPLE. 


I. 

AT HOME. 

P ROBERT’S mother was blind. But for her consolation 
A God sent her Frobert, a child of gentleness and of com- 
passionateness. Scarcely could a mother have been loved 
more tenderly. Eyes to the blind indeed was Frobert, and a 
foot to the lame. 

That this good mother should receive her sight was the 
daily prayer of the child. Than this he had no other tem- 
poral blessing to ask of Heaven. He was not as other chil- 
dren. By nature he was gentle and loving, and his mother’s 
affliction had kq^t him by her side, making him thoughtful 
beyond his years, and causing him to move about gently, to 
sneak softly. Making him prayerful too — beyond the wont 
of children who have lately come to the use of reason. And 
Ihe prayerfulness made him holy. 

So Frobert lived his child-life devoted to his mother for 
her own sake and for God’s sake : devoted to God above all 
things. - 

It was no wonder that he shrank from the rough play of 
the street, and that he cared so little for what gives pleasure 
to the average child. In the eyes of the boisterous and the 
rough he was a simpleton. They did not understand that 


139 


nature, and the circumstances of his life, had made him 
gentle and gracious, and that grace acting upon nature had 
made him saintly. To the rough and the rude he was Fro- 
bert the Simpleton : to his poor blind mother he was the very 
joy of life. 

He lived in the lone west country of France where the 
mountains of the Vosges begin their formidable range, and 
where the heavy snows of winter are now followed with a 
wealth of wild cherry blossom that keeps the hills white with 
flowers when they cease to be white with snow. And he 
lived in the far-off times of the seventh century when Eng- 
land had just been converted, and when our country had 
no church or religious house comparable with that Abbey of 
Luxeuil which was the glory of the neighborhood in which 
Frobert lived. 

A wild period it certainly was, although the light of Faith 
was burning brightly enough in western France; a wild 
country, too, where the winter lasted long, and the wolves 
ran through the streets of the little towns at the foot of the 
Vosges. A perilous journey was it to the Bishop’s school, 
sometimes an impossible one ; but for all his gentleness the 
boy was hardy and courageous, and indeed his goodness and 
purity made him brave. An apt scholar, too, he showed 
himself, with a special taste for all holy learning and a very 
marked preference for the sacred books. Doubtless even as 
a young boy the Bishop of Troyes had heard of his goodness 
and his dogged application to his work, for it was to the 
prelate’s own school that Frobert was sent. 

But to leave the poor blind mother day by day was a sore 
trial to the boy, and he determined that if earnest and per- 
sistent prayer could bring about a miracle, as indeed it had 


140 


so often done, that prayer should not be wanting. So day 
by day Frobert applied himself to his work with all the 
energy he possessed : day by day he implored the good God 
to look with pity upon his mother’s affliction and to restore 
her sight. For how long he prayed we are not told. 

But on a day never tO' be forgotten, while he was standing 
by the loving woman’s side receiving the motherly caresses 
she so often bestowed upon him — suddenly he threw his arms 
about her and tenderly kissed her sightless eyes. Then full 
of confidence in the power and pity of Jesus Christ, who 
once gave sight to the blind, Frobert made the sign of the 
Cross on his mother’s eyes, and, in a paroxysm of prayer, im- 
plored the help of Heaven. The petition of this pure-souled 
child was heard. His mother received her sight, 

Frobert was the holy child of a holy mother. What could 
she offer to God in thanksgiving for one of the greatest tem- 
poral favors it is possible for a human being to receive? 
Well, just at that particular time, God asked for no great 
sacrifice in return : the day came, however, when He de- 
manded nothing less than the son she loved so fondly. For, 
as time went on, it became more and more clear that Fro- 
bert had a call to the life of religion. No greater sacrifice 
could have been asked of this good mother, a woman poor in 
this world’s goods and, as far as we know, having no other 
son to work for her; yet freely and generously she gave 
her child to God. 


IN THE CLOISTER. 

So the doors of the great Abbey of Luxeuil were opened 
to Frobert — still a boy of tender years. Both for mother 


and son the wrench was a terrible one. Frobert had need 
now of all the courage which is ever the outcome of genuine 
piety. He had left a poor but a very happy home, and a 
mother who loved him tenderly, to live in a great monastery 
where there were six hundred monks, besides a great band 
of boy-pupils, chiefly the sons of French nobles. Founded 
only some thirty years or so before the birth of Frobert, by 
that amazing and intrepid Irish missionary, St. Columban, 
the Abbey of Luxeuil was at this time the very head and 
centre of all intellectual life in France. It was protected by 
her kings, and it gave the Church her bishops. From its 
walls went forth many a band of holy monks to preach the 
faith in dark and savage places, and many were the religious 
houses that sprang from it and followed the Columban Rule. 
Not less than one hundred and five monasteries were 
founded by these disciples of St. Columban in France, Ger- 
many, Switzerland, and Italy. 

Beautiful and holy as the life was at Luxeuil, we can well 
understand the bewilderment of Frobert when he first found 
himself walking its crowded cloisters. Though he had done 
well at the Bishop’s school and gave promise of becoming a 
scholar, he seems to have entered this severe Order as a lay- 
brother. Severe indeed was the Rule as laid down by St. 
Columban ; but this great man had passed away, and the ex- 
isting Abbot appears to have been as kind and sympathetic 
as he was zealous and holy. Yet the young novice must 
have shuddered when he heard of the painful penances ac- 
cepted by his brothers for what seem to us very trifling faults : 
the six lashes inflicted upon those who did not answer Amen 
at grace ; the same for talking in the refectory or for smiling 
in church ; the fifty lashes for such greater faults as wilful 


142 


disobedience and insubordination. Nay, there were of 
fences for which the penance was two hundred strokes, and 
it would be slight consolation to a boy to know that only 
twenty-five were ever administered at one time. 

But we must remember that St. Columban had had to 
deal with a great body of men, many of whom were barely 
civilized ; men who had everything tO' unlearn and much to 
learn ; nor must we forget that we are reading of a period 
more than three hundred years before the Norman Conquest. 

The marvel is that so many of these monks were such holy 
and learned men; that they were both there is abundant and 
clear historical proof. But we need not be surprised if we 
find that there was a brother here and there not quite so 
thoughtful and considerate as we might expect a monk to 
be. Frobert was simple with the beautiful simplicity that 
belongs to some characters, and which seems to have very 
little to do with the absence of intelligence. He was one 
of those lovable people that men. are inclined to laugh at — 
not by any means in an unkindly way, but because their sense 
of humor is greater than that of their victim. Sometimes 
indeed the laughter is altogether of a kindly nature and, like 
Dickens’s delightful Tom Pinch, the person who provoked it 
is greatly loved. 

Frobert was, in some respects, a Tom Pinch of the seventh 
century. To begin with, he was very ignorant of the world 
of men, and never suspected that there were people who 
would take advantage of his ignorance. Even the world of 
the cloister was to him a new and a surprising world, and 
he saw' and heard of many things the very names of which 
he did not know. 

Perhaps he had already made some amusing mistakes, and 


143 


was getting a reputation for the comical little errors that 
provoke laughter; anyhow, he was one day made the subject 
of a very thoughtless practical joke. 

There was a visitor in the abbey at that time, a certain 
religious man named Tuedolin, who had come to Luxeuil 
for purposes of study, and Brother Frobert was appointed 
to attend upon him. The goodness of his young servant 
was, no doubt, fully appreciated by the stranger ; yet he could 
not, or rather did not, resist the temptation to have a little 
fun at Frobert’s expense. Perhaps we shall be inclined to 
smile when we are told that Frobert did not know a pair 
of compasses when he saw them; but again we must re- 
member the period, and the fact that the school apparatus of 
that time was very primitive. 

Tuedolin, then, sent the boy to another monk to ask for 
a pair of compasses, and the brother to whom the novice 
was sent, suspecting the nature of the errand, took up a 
couple of stones from a hand-mill that was lying near, and 
put them round Frobert’s neck. Obediently enough the boy 
tried to carry the ‘‘compasses” to Tuedolin’s cell, though the 
weight of them was almost more than he could support. 
Staggering along the cloister, and trying to ease the weight 
upon his neck by holding the stones in his hands, Frobert 
suddenly came face to face with his Abbot. In sheer com- 
passion the Superior stopped to ask the lad where he was 
going. Very simply, Frobert explained that he was taking 
“a pair of compasses” to the visitor — who wanted them for 
literary purposes. Removing the mill-stones from the boy’s 
neck, the Abbot burst into tears, grieved to the heart that 
the simple lad should have been made a fool of by those 
who had every opportunity of knowing his goodness. 


144 


The rebuke administered to Tuedolin and the other monk 
was a sharp one, and it is very unlikely that they ever played 
any other practical joke upon Frobert. 

But in spite of this little matter and the undoubted hard- 
ness of the life, the young novice was entirely happy. For 
he possessed within himself the secret of happiness — a pure 
heart and a clear conscience. Moreover, he knew that he 
had been called to this holy state of life and that he was 
doing the will of God in all things. 

III. 

AT THE bishop's HOUSE. 

Being beloved of God it was necessary that Frobert should 
be tried, and the trial came to him in a particularly unwel- 
come form. How long he had been at the abbey when his old 
friend the Bishop of Troyes called him from the cloister, we 
are not told, but we may be sure that the boy had finished 
the term of his noviceship, and was looking forward to a 
peaceful if toilsome life within the dearly-loved walls of 
Luxeuil. 

But the good Bishop had not forgotten the gentle and 
modest little lad who had once sat in the Cathedral School. 
The prelate liked to have holy people about him ; moreover, 
he saw great possibilities in this young peasant-boy. 

So, much as it cost him, Frobert willingly obeyed, and 
passed from the peaceful cloister to the house of the Bishop 
in the city of Troyes. But he did not cease to live as a 
monk. Hard as he found it to keep his Rule and to follow 
the daily practises of his dear Order amid his new sur- 
roundings, he relaxed nothing in the austere mode of living 


145 


prescribed by St. Columban. The Bishop’s servants did not 
approve of his austerities, and when Lent came and Frobert 
ate nothing until after sunset, they became downright angry. 
Then some of them started a story that the young monk 
was a humbug and that his pretense of fasting till evening 
was all nonsense. They said this to the Bishop, adding 
that Brother Frobert kept a supply of food in his chamber 
and ate secretly. 

Probably the Bishop did not believe them, but he thought 
it only right to submit Frobert to some little test. So, to 
the lad’s surprise, his lordship told him that he could change 
his room and move into a little cell in the Cathedral tower. 
Frobert was delighted, for he was now somewhat nearer to 
God’s altar, and the tower-chamber, though rather cold and 
desolate, was very quiet and peaceful. But he could not 
for some time understand why the Bishop so constantly 
looked in upon him — at meal-times, for example, and indeed 
at all sorts of extraordinary hours. » However, his lordship 
v^as soon satisfied that Frobert had no store of provisions 
and that his Lenten fast was no pretense. 

So, somewhat to his regret, Frobert left his chamber in 
the tower — only to find that the Bishop wished him to pre- 
pare himself for Sacred Orders. 


IV. 

IN AFTER YEARS. 

Frobert’s great wish was to be hidden and unknown, but 
it seems as though the more he withdrew himself from public 
life the more he was sought after. He could not even escape 
the notice of the Emperor. Not only in the city of Troyes, 


146 


but throughout the land the fame of his holiness and his 
miracles began to spread. The good Bishop soon saw that 
Almighty God had some great work for the young monk 
to do. This work was nothing less than the founding of a 
new monastery. On land given to him for the purpose by 
Clovis II. Frobert built the famous monastery of La Celle. 

Thus the monk who had once been regarded as a simple- 
ton became one of the most remarkable Abbots of his time, 
and ruled a community largely made up of scholars. For 
many long years he lived a holy and a happy life at La Celle, 
spending his last days in the building of a handsome church. 
His strength seems to have lasted as long as the church was 
in progress : when it was finished he knew that he had not 
long to live. 

It was near Christmas, and the Abbot’s great desire was to 
see the church consecrated on the Feast of the Nativity. 
But the Bishop could not well leave his Cathedral on so great 
a day, and Frobert prayed earnestly that his life might be 
prolonged until the octave-day of Christmas. His prayer 
was answered. When on the ist of January the building 
had been solemnly dedicated to God, quietly and happily the 
Abbot passed away. 


147 


SHEER PLUCK. 


I. 

I F the world has an esteem for any particular virtue, that 
virtue is fortitude. Under the name of pluck every man 
admires this quality and loves to see it in action. It appeals 
to men of every class ; to the old as. much as to the young; to 
women as well as to men. A lack of this virtue is peculiarly 
humiliating both to man and boy: possession of it in any 
uncommon degree raises the individual to the rank of a hero. 

St. Thomas tells us that we may regard fortitude in two 
ways: (i) As meaning a certain firmness of mind and 

purpose: (2) as signifying firmness in the enduring and re- 
sisting of those difficulties in which it is hardest to have 
firmness. 

Fortitude, then, is a certain moral strength or courage — 
unyielding courage in the endurance of pain and adversity. 
With physical or structural strength it has nothing to do. 
The use of the Latin fortitude in connection with bodily 
strength is very rare ; its employment in English in the same 
sense is said to be obsolete. 

As one of the four cardinal virtues it is therefore strength 
or firmness of mind or soul which enables a person to do 
and to dare, to suffer and to endure without murmurs or 
complaint or depression. It is the foundation of, the source 


148 


and basis of, all courage and bravery, of all patience in suffer- 
ing, of all forbearance and magnanimity. In one word, it is 
Manliness, 

‘‘The principal act of fortitude is endurance,^* says St. 
Thomas, and he defines endurance as “the remaining steady 
and unflinching in dangers, rather than attacking.'' Endur- 
ance is more difficult than taking the offensive, he tells us. To 
attack another supposes that we have the upper hand ; if we 
are attacked, the opponent is probably the stronger. Again, 
endurance supposes a long time, but one may attack by a 
sudden movement. “It is harder to remain long immovable 
than with a sudden motion to move forward to an arduous 
task." 

To prove that mere physical courage is vastly inferior to 
fortitude is unnecessary : the task would be like the flogging 
of a dead ass. Perhaps only a very small boy, or a very 
foolish man, has ever ventured to deny that the ruling of 
one's self is a harder and braver thing than the taking of 
a strong city. Nevertheless, in the minds of many there is 
a lamentable tendency tO' confuse animal courage with moral 
bravery, and to prefer a spirit of mere brutal combativeness 
to that grand endurance of pain and suffering which can 
alone raise a man to the rank of the truly heroic. 

Disgusted with a life-long reading of the lives of men who 
became less heroic the more he knew of them, Edward Fitz- 
gerald exclaimed : “I think there is but one Hero : and 
that is the Maker of Heroes." We may applaud this senti- 
ment even while we point out that if the Incarnate God is 
the Maker of heroes, those heroes have lived or are living. 
“Know you not that the Saints shall judge this world ?" asks 
St. Paul of the Corinthians ; and he reminds the Thessalon- 


149 


ians of “the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all His 
saints/' and again, that “He shall come to be glorified in 
His saints.” 

There never was a saint who was not also' a hero; but of 
how few of those heroes, so-called, whose names are 
honoured by the world, can we say that they were in any 
degree saintly? 

To set forth the lives of the Saints of God merely as so 
many examples of fortitude, as so many models of pluck, 
would be an easy and a grateful task. But it would scarcely 
give us a complete portrait of these true heroes of earth and 
heaven. For the topmost thing about them is — ^their love 
of God above all things, their love of the neighbour for God’s 
sake. Self-love, the universal vice — selfishness in every 
form — self-interest, self-pity, self-complacency, self-conceit, 
self-seeking, self-enjoyment, self-pleasing, self-conscious- 
ness, self-exaltation, self-deceit, self-will, self-esteem, self- 
indulgence — each and every one of these bad qualities was 
met and fought and done to death by the Saints of God. 
They are saints just because they were not lovers of self. 
They were canonized not so much because of the external 
wonders they wrought, nor because of the miracles they per- 
formed, but precisely because they loved God and their neigh- 
bor in a degree that was in every sense of the word heroic. 

II. 

Among the many early saints who are renowned for their 
courage, the young Simeon Stylites is a magnificent example. 

Born in the year 390, he lived in Sisan, a little town in 
Cilicia on the borders of Syria. His father was a poor shep- 


herd, aiid like Joseph and David the boy looked after his 
father’s sheep. One day in the depth of winter when it was 
impossible to lead the sheep to pasture, the young Simeon 
went to assist at the Offices of the Church. Whether he 
heard the Beatitudes read and commented upon for the first 
time we are not told; but it is certain that their meaning 
came home to him that day with great force. Blessed are 
they that mourn: Blessed are the clean of heart — ^these in 
particular struck the thirteen-year-old boy and made him 
thoughtful. He could not be happy until he had asked a 
certain old man to expound the meaning of these moving 
words of Christ, and when he understood them he begged to 
be told how the promised blessedness could be obtained. 
Doubtless it was pointed out to him that every Christian had 
the choice of two roads — that of the precepts and that of the 
counsels. One was harder and narrower and more toilsome 
than the other, but it was safer and better for those who 
were called by God to enter upon it and was for them the 
high road to happiness and to perfection. 

Then Simeon began tO' pray, and his prayer was no hur- 
ried recital of an Our Father or a Hail Mary. He was brave 
and fearless — this young shepherd lad, and he was deter- 
mined to listen to the voice of God. In secret he prayed as 
though life itself depended upon his prayer. Prostrate on 
the ground he implored God to guide and enlighten him. 

Exhausted, perhaps, by the length and vehemence of his 
prayer, he fell asleep, and in his sleep he was permitted to 
see a vision. 

The lad dreamed that he was digging — digging deeply for 
the foundations of a house. Toiling hard, he was compelled 
to stop now and then in order to take breath. Four times, 


he afterwards said, did he rest for an instant, and each time 
he distinctly heard a voice calling to him and saying — ''Dig 
Deeper r At length he was told to cease. The pit was 
deep enough for the foundations of whatever structure he 
cared to raise upon it. 

‘‘The event,'' says an ancient writer, “verified the pre- 
diction. The after-life of this wonderful lad was so superior 
to nature that it might w^ell require the deepest possible foun- 
dation of humility and fervor." 

Not far from his father's house there was a monastery 
under the care of a holy abbot named Timothy. Rising 
from sleep Simeon betook himself to the gate of this re- 
ligious house. Though not the only way by which perfec- 
tion may be reached, the boy knew that the monastic life was 
the best and readiest means of attaining such an end. Yet 
his humility did not permit him to ask for the religious 
habit. To be the drudge of the servants of the servants of 
God was his only aspiration at this time. For several days 
and nights he lay prostrate at the gate without taking either 
food or drink, begging that he might be admitted as the 
lowest of the hired servants of the Abbot. His request was 
eventually granted, and for four months with great fervor 
and affection he undertook the meanest offices of the abbey. 

It would almost appear that during these months he was 
regarded as a novice — at any rate as a postulant, for it is 
expressly said of him that he undertook that first task of a 
novice — not imposed in primitive times only, but still en- 
joined in some of the ancient religious orders — ^the learning 
by heart of the one hundred and fifty psalms of David. 
What a precious possession for a young mind ! The entire 
psalter committed to memory — every one of those priceless 


152 


hymns ready to pass from mind to lips at any moment of 
the day or night ! 

In this monastery Simeon remained for two years, ever 
advancing in love and humility and gaining the esteem and 
good-will of his older religious brethren. 

Whether the boy-monk now wished to place himself at a 
greater distance from home or parents, or whether he wished 
to join a stricter community, we are not told; but at the age 
of fifteen Simeon passed to the Monastery of Heliodorus, an 
abbot of great sanctity, who had passed sixty-two of the 
sixty-five years of his life in this community. 

It is now that the lad began that wonderful life of morti- 
fication which in an age and in a part of the world where 
penance and fasting were very ordinary matter-of-fact occur- 
rences, made Simeon Stylites renowned. We must not for- 
get who and what he was. As a poor shepherd boy he had 
lived a simple open-air life, and his food had always been the 
food of the poor. Doubtless his frame was a sturdy one 
and his constitution vigorous and healthy. We know not 
what his particular reason may have been for eating but 
once a week. We know nothing of his interior trials and 
temptations. We know, too, that fasting is but a means to 
an end, and that perfection does not consist in afflicting the 
body. No one knew this better than Simeon himself, but 
he loved God above all things and he wanted to prove his 
love. Let it be frankly admitted that at this time of his 
life he made mistakes; but better than all the penances and 
fastings and mortifications was the obedience he showed to 
his Superior. Heliodorus forbade him to fast for sO' long 
a time, and Simeon at once yielded — only however to fall 
into an indiscretion of another kind. 


153 


III. 

It may be that fierce temptations afflicted the pure soul of 
this growing boy, and that he was heroically determined 
to overcome them at any cost. Round and round his body 
next to the skin he bound a rough, thick well-rope, made of 
the big, hard-twisted leaves of the palm-tree. He did this 
unknown to his Superior or to any of his brethren. That 
this instrument of penance caused him great suffering is cer- 
tain. The rope began to eat into his flesh and a terrible 
’ abscess was the result. A physician had to be called in to cut 
the cords. He was compelled to make incisions in the flesh, 
and these nearly cost the patient his life. For three days 
liquids had to be applied to soften the shreds of clothing that 
clung to the wound, and it is said that for some time the boy 
lay as though he were dead. But he recovered — only to be 
dismissed from the monastery. 

Let this not be forgotten. Simeon had erred, and the 
error cost him very dearly. His Abbot regarded such con- 
duct as a dangerous singularity, prejudicial to true religious 
discipline, and he would have none of it. And, remember, 
this Abbot was a man of singular holiness, and one who 
for many years had led a life of great mortification. 

It is not clear for how long a time Simeon remained un- 
der the care of Abbot Helidorous, but at the time of his 
dismissal the Saint was, probably, only a boy. Sadly wan- 
dering away from the monastery, he came in contact with a 
holy priest named Bassus, and at the foot of Mount Tel- 
nescin, or Thelanissa, he began to lead the life of a hermit. 
The Abbot Bassus — he had two hundred monks in his charge 
— became Simeon's director. 


154 


The boy was determined now to act only under obedience, 
and at the beginning of Lent when he asked permission to 
abstain from all food and drink during the entire forty days, 
the Abbot gave him ten loaves of bread and a supply of 
water, charging him to eat if he found it necessary. Com- 
ing to him at Easter with the Most Blessed Sacrament, 
Bassus found the young hermit stretched upon the ground, 
apparently dead. The loaves and the water had not been 
touched. Reviving him a little by moistening his lips with 
a sponge, the priest gave him Holy Communion. A little 
later Simeon broke his fast upon lettuce leaves and herbs. 

In this hermitage he spent three years, and then built for 
himself at the top of the mountain — not a hut, not even a 
shed, but a sort of wall, a roofless screen that afforded him 
little or no shelter from the cold of the mountain top. Then 
he had an iron ring riveted round his right leg and connected 
by a great chain to the rock upon which he lived. Among 
those who visited him at this time was Meletius, vicar of 
the Patriarch of Antioch, who told him that a firm will and 
the grace of God would keep him to his purpose without the 
wearing of a fetter. At once the obedient Simeon sent for a 
smith and had the shackle removed. 

And now the Saint’s troubles began. Day after day the 
mountain was thronged with the crowds who came to him 
to be cured of their diseases, to listen to his exhortations, or 
to receive his blessing. The distraction caused by these 
visits, to a man whose only longing was to be alone with 
God, may be imagined. 

For the next thirty-seven years of his life he lived on 
pillars, beginning with a column of stone six cubits high. 
After four years he raised a second one of twelve cubits. 


155 


Three years later he built another one, twenty-two cubits in 
height, and remained upon it for ten years. But for the last 
twenty years of his life he lived upon a pillar built for him 
by the people — a column that reached the height of forty 
cubits Thus he was to be known in history as the Stylites, 
from the Greek stylos, a pillar. 

Tennyson’s poem on the Saint is known to all English- 
speaking readers. It is in many respects an exceedingly fine 
piece of versification, but it gives us an absurdly imperfect 
portrait of St. Simeon. Like most Protestant readers and 
perhaps a few unthinking Catholic ones. Lord Tennyson 
misses the secret of the hermit’s sanctity, and the leading 
characteristic of the Saint’s life. Some portions of the long 
soliloquy that the poet puts into Simeon’s mouth are im- 
possible; yet the late Laureate had evidently studied his 
subject with care and tried to treat it sympathetically. 

The refrain of this poetical monologue is indeed exactly 
what we might expect from a saint — “Have mercy. Lord, 
and take away my sin.” This was undoubtedly the burden 
of St. Simeon’s prayer ; but a poet who could put the follow- 
ing into the mouth of Stylites proves that he read the lives 
of the saints to little purpose : 

O Jesus, if Thou wilt not save my soul, 

Who may be saved? Who is it may be saved? 

Who may be made a saint, if I fail here? 

Nor would Simeon in his prayer make a catalogue of the 
penances he had practised since his boyhood : 

For not alone this pillar-punishment. 

Not this alone I bore : but while I lived 
In the white convent down the valley there, 

^ Dr. Arbuthnot reckons the Roman cubit at 171% inches. 


156 


For many weeks about my loins I wore » 

The ropes that hauled the buckets from the well, 

Twisted as tight as I could knot the noose ; 

And spoke not of it to a single soul, 

Until the ulcer, eating through my skin. 

Betrayed my secret penance, so that all 
My brethren marvell’d greatly. More than this 
I bore, whereof, O God, Thou knowest all. 

We have already pointed out that for this particular in- 
discretion the young monk was dismissed from his ‘‘white 
convent,’’ and we may be quite sure that afterwards he bit- 
terly regretted the “not speaking to a single soul” of such 
self-inflicted punishment. Even though he might be con- 
scious of having had a good intention in the matter, he 
would certainly not look back upon it with complacency, or 
offer to Almighty God a singularity that, for the time at 
least, deprived him of his vocation. Tennyson was a great 
poet, and there are some wonderful lines in his St. Simeon 
Stylites; but the Laureate’s grasp of the principles of Cath- 
olic faith and practise was always a very loose one. 

It can never be repeated too often that mortification is not 
in itself sanctity; that in itself it is not the quality that 
raises a man to the altars of the Church. Sometimes it is 
a contributing cause to holiness of life; sometimes it is the 
natural effect of an overpowering love of God. Such mortifi- 
cations as these of the Stylites are not only not imitable, but 
they are not the actions that make him dear to the Catholic 
heart. That his penances were truly heroic, and that as an 
example of fortitude he is wonderful, even among the saints, 
may be granted ; but his claim upon our love and veneration 
comes precisely through his ready obedience, his profound 
humility, and his perfect charity. 

Bidden to descend from his pillar he at once complies. 


157 


Twice every day he preached to the people, and his influence 
for good seems to have been almost unbounded. Not merely 
Christians but pagans and barbarians crowded to hear him. 
We read of an entire nation being converted to the Faith 
through his sermons and miracles. Persians, Armenians, 
and Iberians, made long pilgrimages to hear him : emperors, 
kings and queens came to consult him. The Empress Eu- 
doxia was rescued by him from the heresy of Eutychus : the 
Emperor Marcian came to him disguised as a poor pilgrim. 
Solitary as he was, St. Simeon did not live for himself alone.^ 


^ The following passage from the pen of a Protestant writer of the life of 
St. Simeon, is of interest : 

“The fame of the wondrous austerities of this man wrought upon the 
wild Arab tribes, and effected what no missionaries had been able, as yet, 
to perform. No doubt the fearful severities exercised by Simeon, on himself, 
are startling and even shocking. But the Spirit of God breathes where He 
wills, and thou canst not tell whence He cometh and whither He goeth. 
What but the divine Spirit could have caught that young boy’s soul away 
from keeping sheep, and looking forward to the enjoyment of youth and 
precipitated it into this course, so contrary to flesh and blood ? Theodoret 
says, that as kings change the impression of their coins, sometimes stamping 
them with the image of lions, sometimes of stars, sometimes of angels, so 
the divine Monarch produces different marks of sanctity at different periods, 
and at each period He calls forth these virtues, or characters He needs for 
a particular work. So was it now; on the wild sons of the desert no mis- 
sionaries had made an impression ; their rough hearts had given no echo to 
the sound of the Gospel. Something of startling novelty was needed to catch 
their attention and strike their imagination, and drag them violently to the 
cross. These wild men came from their deserts to see the weird, haggard 
man in his den. He fled from them as they crowded upon him, not into 
the wastes of sand, but up a pillar ; first up one six cubits, then one twelve 
cubits, and finally one of thirty-six. The sons of Ishmael poured to the foot 
of the pillar, ‘like a river along the roads, and formed an ocean of men 
about it. And,’ says Theodoret, ‘myriads of Ishmaelites, who had been 
enslaved in the darkness of impiety, were illuminated by that station on the 
column. For this most shining light, set as it were on a candlestick, sent 
forth all around his beams, like the sun, and one might see Iberi, Persians, 
and Armenians, coming and receiving Divine Baptism. But the Ishmaelites 
(Arabs) coming by trills, 200 and 300 at a time, and sometimes even 1,000, 
denied with shouts the error of their ancestors ; and breaking in pieces the 
images they had worshipped, and renouncing the orgies of Venus, they received 
the Divine Sacraments, and accepted laws from that holy tongue. And this 
I have seen with my own eyes, and have heard them renouncing the impiety 
of their fathers, and assenting to evangelic doctrine.’ Here was the result. 
Little did the boy know, as he lay before the monastery door five days with- 


158 


Happy were they for whom he prayed, and blessed was she 
who bore him ; for we are told by a disciple of his that after 
his mother’s death the Saint’s prayers for her were most 
fervent. Ever regarding himself as the vilest of sinners 
and the outcast of the world, his charity and sweetness to 
others had no limit. He was always ready to submit him- 
self to ecclesiastical authority, and the fact that the Patriarch 
of Antioch and other prelates and priests were willing to 
mount the column in order to give him Holy Communion, 
shows that his manner of life was blessed by God, and ap- 
proved by the Church. He died in 459, in the sixty-ninth 
year of his age. 

out eating, to what God had called him ; for what work he was predestined, 
when he coiled the rope about his body. The Spirit had breathed, and he 
had followed the impulse, and now he wrought what the tongue of a prophet 
could not have effected. And it was worth the pain of that rope tom from 
his bleeding body ; it was recompense for those long fastings. 

Three winters, that my soul might grow to Thee* 

I lived up there on yonder mountain side ; 

My right leg chain’d into the crag. I lay 
Pent in a roofless close of ragged stones ; 

Inswathed sometimes in wandering mist and twice 
Black’d with Thy branding thunder, and sometimes 
Sucking the damps for drink, and eating not. 

It was worth all this, if souls could be added to the Lord, as they were, by 
hundreds and thousands. God’s ways are not our ways. The God who 
needed these souls, called up the soul of Simeon to do the work. Simeon 
obeyed, and traversed perhaps the most awful path man has yet trod. 

It is not for us to condemn a mode of life which there is no need of 
men to follow now. It was needed then, and he is rightly numbered with the 
Saints, who submitted his will to that of God, to make him an instrument 
for His purpose.” 


159 


THE STORY OF EPHREM. 


I N Nisibis, sixteen hundred years ago, lived a lad named 
Ephrem. He was the son of poor parents who were 
good Catholics and who had indeed suffered much for the 
Faith, for they lived in the terrible times of the Emperor 
Diocletian, and the wonder is that they are known only as 
confessors and not as martyrs. 

Their son gave them much trouble. “The wrath of his 
high spirits is his ruin,” says Ecclesiasticus. There is dan- 
ger in mere high spiritedness unless it is kept in check by 
prayer and sacraments. In itself it is a lovable quality 
enough, and one that, joined to the fear of God, is likely 
to result in something very good. The lightheartedness of 
the saints is a proverb. But high spirits in conjunction 
with a fiery and passionate temper, and a careless, heedless 
disposition, is bound to bring a man into great trouble — 
sometimes to irretrievable ruin. 

Ephrem^s high spirits were of this description. Laziness 
opens the door to every kind of sin, and he seems to have 
been incurably idle. Ripe for mischief of every kind was 
Ephrem, for if he was sent on an errand by his parents he 
acted like the young man in the parable, saying, “I go, sir,” 
though he only made a pretense of going. He had some 
knowledge of the Catholic Faith, but according to the cus- 
tom of the age and the place his baptism had been put off. 

At first sight, stone-thr owing on the part of a country 

i6o 


boy does not seem a very serious matter, though when it 
is recklessly continued it may lead to very sad results. Wan - 
ton cruelty is quite another matter, and when we hear of 
Ephrem setting to work deliberately to stone a cow that 
was in calf, and continuing this until the poor beast fell dead, 
we feel that ‘'Unpromising Material” is a very mild term 
to apply to him. 

The day upon which this happened he had been sent by 
his parents on an errand to a neighboring town, and it was 
on his way out that the boy seems to have stoned the cow 
to death — spending hours at the task, for he drove it before 
him into a thick wood and it was sunset before the animal 
expired. During the night it was eaten by wild beasts. 

Returning home the next day, Ephrem met on the road 
the poor man who owned the cow. Not suspecting that it 
was dead, but knowing something of the lad’s character, the 
man asked him if he had driven the animal away. The 
only answer the poor fellow got was a torrent of abuse. 

Congratulating himself upon his escape from what might 
have been a serious charge — for the Syrian law in regard 
to property was a severe one — Ephrem was again sent out 
of town on some business for his parents. In passing through 
the wood he came across some shepherds, who proved such 
good company that he loitered with them until nightfall. 
It was too late then to continue his journey, and so he stayed 
with them all night. 

When morning came there was a great to-do. During 
the night the fold had been broken into and some valuable 
sheep carried off. That Ephrem was in league with the 
robbers they never doubted. They thought that he had got 
up in the night and shown the way to the thieves, pointing 

i6i 


out the best and fattest sheep. The boy protested and swore 
and cried, but they would not listen to him. Prison, said 
they, was the only place for him, and to prison they dragged 
him. 

Now in the matter of sheep-stealing — a crime for which 
men in our own country were hanged not so many years ago 
— Ephrem was entirely innocent, and when he found himself 
locked up he began to cry very bitterly. There was no one 
to help him, no one to pity him. It was his first experience 
of prison life and he found it painful. Yet there was worse 
to follow. To lie all day on his little heap of straw with 
heavy irons locked on his ankles was bad enough ; but what 
of the trial that was awaiting him ? Boy as he was, he had 
heard much of the awful tortures that were inflicted upon 
prisoners in the courts of that still pagan country, of the 
sentences of life-long slavery, of fearful mutilation, and of 
terrible modes of execution. In a land that was still heathen 
mercy was almost unknown, and Ephrem had not the small- 
est reason for hoping that his tender age would be a plea 
for pity. He knew that boys as young as himself, even 
younger, had been condemned to die on the gibbet for break- 
ing the laws of their country ; that some indeed had suffered 
the fearful death of crucifixion. 

The boy was not alone in his gloomy prison. Two men 
awaiting trial lay in chains in the same vault as himself. 
Both were accused of serious crimes, and both declared that 
they were innocent. This struck Ephrem as being very 
curious, and he began to think about it a good deal. Of 
the crime with which he was charged he knew himself to be 
innocent: was it possible that his fellow-prisoners were 
equally guiltless? 


One night he dreamed a dream. He thought that some 
very noble-looking person came to his side and said to 
him : “Ephrem, why are you in prison?” At once the boy 
began to declare his innocence. ‘‘Yes,” said the shining 
figure, “you are innocent of the crime of which you are ac- 
cused : but what of the poor man’s cow that you drove to 
its death ? Be quite sure that no one suffers without reason. 
And as a proof of this, when morning comes listen to the 
talk of your fellow-prisoners.” 

On the following day the two men spoke together, and 
one of them who was charged with murder said to the other : 
“I declare that I am not guilty of taking away the life of a 
fellow-creature; but I will tell you of a vile thing I did only 
the other day. As I was passing over a bridge I came upon 
two men quarrelling. One of them at last took hold of the 
other and threw him into the river. Now if I had tried 1 
believe I could have saved that man ; unhappily I did not, and 
the poor fellow was drowned.” 

Then to the utter astonishment of the boy the other man 
began to make a somewhat similar confession. “I am abso- 
lutely innocent of the thing for which I am awaiting my 
trial : nevertheless, I have done something which is very 
bad. A certain neighbour of mine when he was dying left 
his property to be divided between his daughter and his two 
sons. The young men wanted everything for themselves, 
and they bribed me to give false evidence by which the will 
was upset and the poor girl deprived of her share.” 

Nearly six weeks went by before Ephrem and his two 
companions were brought up for trial. The men were tried 
first, but the boy-prisoner was in court during the whole 
time. Neither of the men would confess — were they not 


163 


both innocent ? — and, to the lad's great horror, the rack was 
brought in, the men were stripped and fastened to it hand 
and foot. An awful terror came upon the boy as he saw 
his fellow-prisoners stretched out upon this instrument of 
torture, and his cries filled the hall. But the officers of the 
court and the people who were standing about were merely 
amused by his evident fright, and gave him the coldest of 
all cold comfort. 

‘‘What are you crying for, my lad?” they asked him. 
“It is of no use howling now. You should have thought of 
the rack before you stole the sheep. You are bound to get 
a taste of it very soon.” 

The boy was really half-dead with the anticipation of the 
torture that was before him, and it seems probable that he 
swooned awa}^ from sheer fright. Happily for his compan- 
ions, before their case was finished both of them were able 
to prove their innocence, and so they were set at liberty. 
But there was no time left that day for the trying of Ephrem 
and he was taken back to prison. 

In a few days he found himself with three companions in 
irons, instead of the two who had been released, and curi- 
ously enough the new prisoners turned out to be the two 
brothers who had defrauded their sister out of her property, 
and the man who had thrown his enemy into the river. So 
with these undesirable criminals Ephrem lay in prison for 
another six long weeks. 

A wretched time it must have been for the boy, with the 
terror of the torture still hanging over him, as well as the 
trial — at which it seemed quite possible that he would not 
be able to prove his innocence of the robbery. It is no won- 
der that he began to pray. Though still unbaptized, his 


164 


good Catholic parents — the very thought of whom was an 
agony to him as he lay in prison — had carefully instructed 
him in the Christian Faith, and, like many another poor 
sinner, now that he found himself in serious trouble he 
turned his thoughts to God. He could not but feel that there 
was a certain fitness in his punishment, yet the horror of the 
rack was, naturally enough, strongly upon him, and with all 
his might he prayed God to have pity. 

At length the day came when the prisoners were chained 
together and brought to the place of trial. Again the grown- 
up criminals were examined first, and again that terrible rack 
was brought into operation. But this time the men were 
found guilty, and after being severely racked were sen- 
tenced to lose their right hands. 

Ephrem's turn had now come. Questioned by the judge, 
the young prisoner declared that he was innocent. “This is 
the plea of every criminal,'’ said the judge. “Here, take 
and strip him and fasten him on the rack.” More dead than 
alive, the unhappy boy was stripped of his clothing and was 
about to have his hands and feet lashed to the wooden 
rollers of the rack, when a servant entered the court and told 
the judge that it was dinner-time, and that his meal was 
ready and waiting. 

“Very well,” replied the judge; “in that case I will try 
this boy some other day. Take him back to gaol.” 

So the lad escaped the rack this time also. In the ex- 
tremity of his terror he had made a vow that if only God 
would deliver him from the punishment he dreaded so much, 
he would become a monk. Well, he had been delivered that 
day just in the nick of time, in a most sudden and unexpected 
manner. But what of the dreaded future ? It seemed likely 


165 


that that awful dislocation of his young limbs had only been 
put off to an unknown day. 

Happily for Ephrem, for this third trial he had not long 
to wait. It is probable that some good-hearted officer re- 
minded the court of the length of time the boy had been 
in prison; at any rate the judge thought that he had been 
punished quite enough, and, to his intense joy, his shackles 
were removed and he was set at liberty. 

II. 

What think you did the boy Ephrem do as soon as he 
found himself free? Did he go back home to his parents — 
stoning cattle by the way and stopping to play with every 
shepherd-lad he met? By no means. 

Everybody knows the old couplet beginnings — 

The devil was sick, the devil a monk would be ; 

and it is certain that many promises are made to God in 
time of sickness or peril that are not fulfilled in seasons of 
health and safety; but Ephrem had taken a vow and he in- 
tended to keep it. He knew that in the mountains not far 
off there lived an old hermit : to this holy man he would 
offer himself as a novice. 

It seems at first sight that for such a life no lad could 
have been less fitted. Probably he himself doubted very 
much if the hermit would accept him. However, he had 
made a vow, and he would do his best to fulfil it. He was 
not ignorant of the kind of life that he would be called upon 
to live : yet hard as the monastic rule might be he did not 
shrink from it. Hands and brain would both be fully em- 


ployed and his food would be of the scantiest; but God had 
delivered him from prison and from torture, and Ephrem 
must needs prove his gratitude. The sufferings of the last 
three months had made him thoughtful. If an earthly prison 
was so gloomy, what would Hell be like? If the pain of 
the rack was so much to be dreaded, what of the punish- 
ment in that place ol endless torment ? 

The saintly old man to whom he went did not refuse to 
receive him. In good earnest Ephrem began to engage in 
two of the healthiest exercises known to man, viz., prayer 
and work. He became a sail-maker. At the same time 
he began to use his head. Through no fault of his parents, 
his education had been neglected and he had everything to 
learn. But he was in earnest, and when man or boy begins 
to put forth the full strength of his will, and the energies a 
good God has given him, there is not much that he can- 
not do. 

Certainly Ephrem did wonders. There was that bad tem- 
per of his to control and to subdue, and like the sensible fel- 
low he was he began with that. 

The notable thing about this lad was his great earnestness. 
God had been good to him : Ephrem was bent upon proving 
his gratitude. Sorrow for sin became his chief exercise. 
He was determined to repair the past. But he had not with- 
drawn himself from the world in order to lead an idle life. 
Brain and hand were now fully occupied, and he was earning 
the bread he ate. In this way he bade farewell to idleness 
for evermore. For the rest, had he not put himself under 
the obedience of a holy and experienced Abbot ? And is not 
everything possible to the obedient ? 

No boy, no man becomes a saint in a day. Naturally bad- 
167 


tempered, he had to struggle hard with his irritability and 
ill-humor : the point is that he did struggle, and that every 
such struggle, however unsuccessful it might seem to be, 
was a victory. Once after he had fasted for several days 
and was just going to sit down to a mess of herb pottage, the 
Brother who was carrying the bowl let it fall. “Well,” said 
Ephrem cheerfully to the rueful-looking monk, “if the pot 
won’t come to me, I must go to it.” So he took his seat on 
the floor and picked up what he could from the broken basin. 

Ephrem’s baptism made him a new creature. The past 
was forgiven; the sins of his youth were washed away. 
Grace was offered to him, and he accepted it fervently and 
thankfully — used it determinedly and assiduously. Hence- 
forth he was all for God. His was no half conversion. Ap- 
plying himself to manual labor, and at the same time exer- 
cising his memory by learning the whole of the Psalter, he 
gave himself generously to the duties of his vocation. It 
was soon discovered that his abilities were of a high order, 
and his Superiors encouraged him in the study of philosophy 
and theology. 


III. 

After long preparation Ephrem obtained leave to go to 
Edessa in order to hold conference with certain holy hermits 
who lived in the mountains close to that city, and here he 
remained. Receiving the Holy Order of deacon he began 
to preach, and his incredible fervour and zeal bore immense 
fruit. He who in his own life was such a wonderful ex- 
ample of penitence won from God the great gift of touching 
the hearts of sinners, and numerous were the souls that he 
brought to Christ. “He was possessed of an extraordinary 


i68 


faculty of natural eloquence. Words flowed from him like a 
torrent, which yet were too slow for the impetuosity and 
multitude of thoughts with which he was overwhelmfed in 
speaking on spiritual subjects. His conceptions were always 
clear, his diction pure and agreeable. He spoke with ad- 
mirable perspicuity, copiousness, and sententiousness, in an 
easy unaffected style: and with so much sweetness, so pathetic 
a vehemence, so natural an accent, and so strong emotions' 
of his own heart, that his words seemed to carry with them 
an irresistible power.’’ 

But he did not confine himself to preaching. To the glory 
of God and for the good of souls he began to use his pen. 
Though ignorant of Greek, he was a perfect master of 
Syriac, and in this language he wrote what may almost be 
described as a library of ascetical and theological books. 
Heaven had endowed him with the great gift of poetry, and 
this he used with the utmost skill to increase the knowledge 
and love of the Redeemer. Wonderful is the beauty and 
sweetness of his poems on the Nativity of our Lord and on 
the mysteries of religion, and perhaps no poet has ever writ- 
ten more eloquently or more worthily than Ephrem on the 
dignity and holiness of our Blessed Lady. Some of the 
heretics of his time, the Manichees, the Millenarians, and 
the Marionites, had spread their errors by means of songs 
and hymns; for these Ephrem substituted many beautiful 
compositions of his own — ^to the great spiritual gain of the 
people of Edessa. 

If the life of St. Ephrem — for Saint we must now call 
him — were not so well authenticated, and if so many of his 
writings were not in evidence, we might indeed hesitate to 
believe that the more than unpromising material of his boy- 

169 


hood could have been moulded to the shape of a Doctor 
and a Father of the Catholic Church, and of one of the 
greatest masters of the spiritual life in the fourth century. 
It is true that the early life of this Saint is told in different 
ways by different authors, and this is easily accounted for. 
Ephrem himself frequently related the story of it to his 
monks and, as often happens in such cases, in writing it 
down they were not all equally accurate. Even the erudite 
Alban Butler gives a version which, in some of its items, 
does not tally with the more detailed and critical work of 
the Bollandists. Indeed it seems as though Father Butler 
thought that St. Ephrem exaggerated the wildness and sin- 
fulness of his youth ; though this learned hagiologist admits 
the stone-throwing episode, the false accusation of sheep- 
stealing, and the boy's subsequent imprisonment and trial. 

But from the long and copious records of the Acta Sanc- 
torum it is clear enough that whatever many other men may 
have been, Ephrem the Syrian was not a Saint from his 
cradle. He may not have been a monster of iniquity, but 
it is certain enough that he gave nO' promise of sanctity. 
Probably indeed of all the boys in his neighbourhood he was 
the least likely to distinguish himself, either for learning 
or holiness. In short he is a marvellous example of a sin- 
ner who sincerely repents, asks for, receives, and uses the 
grace that God is always ready to give to those who really 
seek it. More than that, he is an example of one who in 
the beginning turned to our Lord from the motive of fear. 
It was sheer fright, the abject terror of the rack, that first 
made Ephrem cry mightily to Heaven. So there was noth- 
ing very noble, nothing in any way heroic, in the beginning 
of this wonderful change of life. Happily, that which be- 


170 


g-an in fear was continued in contrition, and ended in love. 
His deep sorrow for sin made him very dear to God. His 
soul was that of a true penitent, of one who walks humbly 
and proceeds cautiously, who has no trust in himself but an 
unbounded confidence in God. 

In the beginning of his conversion, probably the last thing 
he thought of was that he would ever be able to minister 
to others. It seems almost certain that his humility pre- 
vented him from receiving the priesthood, and that like St. 
Benedict and St. Francis he remained a deacon to the end 
of his life. He loved solitude, and after a term of preach- 
ing would retire into the desert to refresh his own soul with 
prayer and meditation. Yet he was always at the call of 
duty, and showed his readiness to benefit the bodies of the 
people as well as their souls. Once when the city of Edessa 
was severely visited by famine St. Ephrem boldly rebuked 
the callousness of the rich for allowing the poor to die un- 
succoured. ‘‘Your wealth will be your damnation,” he said 
to those who were heedless of their obligation in performing 
works of mercy. Frightened and ashamed, they pretended 
that there was no one tO' whom they could entrust the proper 
distribution of their alms. “Then give me that office,” said 
the Saint. As soon as he had received sufficient money, old 
as he was at the time he fitted up no less than three hundred 
beds in the public hospitals and began to tend the sick and 
the starving with his own hands. It was the last public un- 
dertaking of his long and useful life. It was as though the 
good God had kept him alive until the cessation of the 
famine, for when his services were no longer needed he re- 
turned to his cell and died after a few days' sickness. 

At the time of his death, which took place about the year 


37^, St. Ephrem had reached a very advanced age, but the 
date of his birth is not known. Ancient wTiters tell us that 
he was very tall, and that his countenance was singularly 
sweet and beautiful. In his old age he stooped considerably, 
and though his eyes were often swimming with tears his 
features were wonderfully calm and serene. His devotion 
to the adorable Sacrament was very great, and among the 
last words that he wrote we find the following : ‘‘Entering 
upon so long and dangerous a journey I have my Viaticum, 
even Thee, O Son of God. In my extreme spiritual hunger 
I will feed on Thee, the Repairer of Mankind. So it shall 
be that no fire will dare to approach me : for it will not be 
able to bear the sweet saving odour of Thy Body and Blood.” 

With his last breath he preached, and the entire popula- 
tion of the city crowded to the door of his cell. Forbid- 
ding every kind of funeral pomp, he again and again begged 
prayers for the repose of his soul : then turning to God in 
silent prayer, he gently passed away. 


v;2 


THE BISHOP’S DINNER. 

R IGOBERT from his country cell 
Obeyed the big cathedral bell: 

Bishop of Rheims, and monk, was he, 

Famed for his blithesome sanctity. 

Walking slowly as he was wont. 

His server-laddie marching in front. 
Returning home through street and square 
The Saint recited his office-prayer. 

A rich man met him and thus did say : 

‘*My Lord, pray dine with me to-day ; 

Dinner is ready, the board is spread — 

Come in and bless our daily bread.'’ 

^^To-day I may not dine with you : 

For Holy Mass I am overdue,” 

Smiled the good man, “I must hasten back, 
For as yet the Bread of Heaven I lack.” 

‘‘Then if with me you may not dine. 

You shall have at home a dinner fine; 

A client has brought yon big fat goose — 
Here, lad, take this ! and don’t let it loose !” 

Struggled the boy with the cumbrous bird. 
Tightened his arm the goose to gird; 


173 


Then “Ho!” he wailed and “VVell-a-day !” — 
For the cackling monster had flown away. 

Loud was the cry of the server-child, 

Soft was the voice of the Bishop mild; 

To console the lad his only care 
Till he resumed his morning prayer. 

Presently every passer-by 

Saw a big bird high up in the sky, 

Saw a great goose come fluttering down 
Over the roofs of the ancient town. 

Soon o’er Rigobert’s holy head 
Hovered the goose that lately fled: 

Soon it lay in the city street 
Prone at Rigobert’s saintly feet. 

Then the boy with a gladsome cry 
Re-captured the monster eagerly: 

Brought it safely to Gernicour, 

Right to the Bishop’s very door. 

But not for the spit was that goose designed ; 
On it the old Saint never dined ; 

To the people’s joy and wonderment 
It followed him whithersoever he went. 

That bird became the good man’s pet, 

And for aught I know it is living yet : 

What is certain and sure is this — 

As long as it lived it lived in bliss. 


174 


ST. WULSTAN AND THE CHORISTER. 


A ll sweetly sang the quiring boys 
Walking in Wulstan’s holy train: 

They sang of high unearthly joys 
Where Saints unnumbered reign. 

“All things shall fade, and time shall cease, 
But Heaven remains when life is past; 
Only the things that make for peace, 

Eternal peace, can last.’’ 

As to himself the Bishop talked 

And murmured, “Heavenly joys abide!” — 
A sunny, gold-haired choir-lad walked 
Close to the prelate’s side. 

“Yea, these shall fall,” St. Wulstan said 
Stroking the curls so thick, so fair: 

“One day, my child, upon thy head 
Shall not be found a hair.” 

The boy looked up with troubled mien: 

“Oh, Father, must I lose them all?” — 
Tears gathered in his quiv’ring een — 

“Pray that they may not fall I” 


175 


The Bishop’s smile was kind and sweet, 
His glance was pitiful and mild ; 

An inward prayer he did repeat, 

Blessing the singing-child. 

‘While Wulstan lives, my little son. 

You shall not lose your curly shock; 
From off this head shall fall not one 
Soft silky-golden lock.” 

Years fled (so old-time writers tell) : 

True was the thing that Wulstan said; 
From the grown man not one hair fell — ‘ 
Until the Saint was dead. 


176 


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45 

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HOW TO GET ON. Feeney. net i oa 

LITTLE FOLKS’ ANNUAL, o.io; per 100, ’ 6 00 

READINGS AND RECITATIONS FOR JUNIORS. O’Grady. net. o 50 

RECORD OF BAPTISMS. 14x10 inches, 3 styles. $3.00, 4.00, 6 00 

RECORD OF MARRIAGES. 14x10 inches. 3 styles, $3.00, 4.00 6 00 

SELECT RECITATIONS FOR CATHOLIC SCHOOLS AND ACAD- 
EMIES. By Eleanor O’Grady. 

SURSUM CORD A. Hymns. Cloth, 0.25; per 100, 

Paper, 0.15; per 100, 

SURSUM CORDA. With English and German Text. 

PRAYER-BOOKS. 

Benziger Brothers publish the most complete line of prayer-books in this 
country, embracing 


I 00 
15 00 
10 00 
o 45 


12 


Prayer-books for Children. 

Prayer-books for First Communicants. 

- Prayer-books for Special Devotions. 

Prayer-books for General Use. 

Catalogue will be sent free on application. 

SCHOOL-BOOKS. 

Benaiger Brothers’ school text-books are considered to be the finest pub- 
lished. They embrace 

New Century Catholic Readers. Illustrations in Colors. 

Catholic National Readers. 

Catechisms. 

History. 

Grammars. 

Spellers. 

Elocution. 

.Charts. 


A Home Library for Down. 

Original American Stories for the Youngs by the 
Very Best Catholic Authors, 


C)A COPYRIGHTED BOOKS and a YEAR’S SUBSCRIPTION to 
BENZIGERB MAGAZINE (in itself a library of good reading). 

Regular Price of Books, . . $1170 | Regular Price, 

Regular Price of Benziger s Magazine, 2.00 ; $13.70* 

Special Net Price, $1000 Si. 00 Down. $100 a Month. 


You get the books at once, and have the use of them, while making easy pay- 
ments. Send us only $i.oo, and_ we will forward the books at once. $i.oo 
entitles you to immediate possession. No further payment need be made for 
a month. Afterward you pay $1.00 a month. 


THIS IS THE EASY WAY TO GET A LIBRARY. 

Ani, remember these are the Best Books that can be placed in the hands of 
Catholic Youth AT ANY PRICE. 


ANOTHER EASY WAY OF GETTING BOOKS. 

Each year we publish four New Novels by the best Catholic authors. 
These novels are interesting beyond the ordinary; not religious, but Catholic 
in tone and feeling. 

We ask you to give us a Standing Order for these novels. The price is 
$1.2$ a volume postpaid. The $5.00 is not to be paid at one time, but $1.25 
each time a volume is published. 

As a Special Inducement for giving us a standing order for these novels, 
we will give you free a subscription to Benziger’s Magazine. This Magazine 
is recognized as the best and handsomest Catholic magazine published. The 
regular price of the Magazine is $2.00 a year. 

Thus for $5.00 a year — paid $1.25 at a time — you will get four good 
books and receive in addition free a year’s subscription to Benziger’s Maga- 
zine. The Magazine will be continued from year to year, as long as the stand- 
ing order for the novels is in force, which will be till countermanded. 

Send $1.2$ for the first novel and get your name placed on the sub- 
scription list of Benziger’s Magazine. 


BENZIGER BROTHERS, 

New York: Cincinnati: Chicago: 

36 and 38 Barclay Street. 343 Main Street. 21 1 and 213 Madison Street. 


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